A Maddening Cause
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: In a world where nobody is innocent, not even the innocent, and everyone is guilty, including the guilty, a child is pushed to the edge of despair and is split between anger and retribution. A life without love and future without hope, only one thing is for certain: Gendo and Yui Ikari's greatest mistake just turned fourteen…and he's been carrying a deep-seated rage that won't rest
1. The Drive

Creation began on 08-12-13

Creation ended on 08-14-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Maddening Cause: The Drive

A/N: Nobody is innocent, not even the innocent. Everyone is guilty, including the guilty.

It was allover the news back in the year Two-Thousand-Six. Nobody was any wiser than they aren't today. All it took was words of contempt, a few bruises, uncaring voices…along with a woman's admittance of what led to her end. Only a trail of blood and shame could tell of what transpired in a simple house with a relative that seemed to lose all sense of sense.

"…The board's still refusing to allow him to be paroled," said a man to a woman dressed in a red with a matching jacket, leading her down a hall with a multitude of door. "Honestly, I don't blame them. He hasn't been right ever since he was brought in. More than half the time, the staff can't even tell if he's there because he's so quiet. He's like a ghost: Silent in every sense of the word."

"And you have no idea of what caused this all to happen?" The woman asked, looking over the small folder that held what was written on the person she was tasked with picking up, seeing very little that was helpful; she did wonder, though, how much on guard she should be when she meets him.

"Only a rumor that he was the target of intense hatred toward his parents by his other relatives that his father dumped him on. Some gossipers once said that the boy's aunt had expressed that if anything happened to him, like getting sick and dying, she wouldn't miss him at all. Then… I don't know, he just…snapped."

"He just snapped?"

"Here we are," the man announced, stopping in front of one door that read "Room II-78J" with the occupant's name written underneath. "You're not going to like what's in there. It's something out of a nightmare of sorts."

As he opened the door, the woman then suspected the reason why the orderly needed short-chained hand and leg-cuffs with him every time he came to this room; the man had stated that this patient was their only extremist case because of how detached he seemed. Within the room, the woman was in awe at what was inside the small space. There had to be over a thousand drawings taped to the walls and ceiling of the room, all depicting either scenes of happiness…and scenes of discord. Many depicted flowers, mountains, lakes and people gathered together, with several corresponding pictures of what could've been their dark opposites, with bloodshed, dismemberment, decapitation, disembowelment, rivers of blood and the like. And at a small desk, seemingly ignorant of their presence, was the person they were here to get, working on what had to be another drawing…using crayons.

His hair was messy, his exposed skin was dirty and his clothes, which should've been a sparse-white, were dusty-gray. It was like the boy was without any measure of caring about anything other than what he was doing at the moment.

"That's him?" The woman asked the orderly. "He's Shinji Ikari?"

"Yeah," the orderly answered back. "He just turned fourteen last week, but for him, and everyone else around here, it's nothing of any concern. Another year of life is another year of awaiting greater retribution for sins committed in the past."

The orderly approached the detached boy while the woman looked to her right to examine a drawing depicting a woman looking like she was getting stabbed to death.

"Oh, my God," she shuddered, raising her hand to touch the drawing, something the orderly, who was putting the restraints on Shinji, noticed with great fear.

"Hey, hey! Don't touch those!" He shouted at her. "Don't ever touch any of those!"

"What?!" She defended, looking at them, and saw that Shinji's hair was so overgrown that it covered his eyes, which she wasn't sure he could see her through the strands.

"He doesn't like it when people touch his drawings. Look, I've been keeping an eye on him ever since he was brought in, and I know from past experience that there are things you simply cannot do around him or even ask him about."

The woman stared at the boy that gave no indication of being aware of her presence, and didn't know whether or not to be afraid of him…or very, very afraid of him. If half of what was written in his file was accurate, then Shinji Ikari was an extreme flight risk to anybody after what he did years ago.

-x-

"There is absolutely no way we can permit him to be transferred out of this facility, even if your organization requests him turned over," said the head of the institute to the woman that came to pick up Shinji Ikari.

"If NERV didn't require him, I wouldn't have come here under orders to get him," the woman expressed. "How long has he been here?"

"Ever since Two-Thousand-Seven…after his trial," revealed a woman that was on the board of parole officials handling the boy's case.

"You mean to say that he's been here, in your institute, for nearly nine years?"

Shinji was sitting down in a chair several feet away from the table of the board officials, watched carefully by two armed guards. With Shinji, they had to take precautions when moving him around or keeping him in check.

"If your organization takes him in, he's no longer our concern," the head of the board warned the woman. "If NERV takes him, that makes him your problem. We wash our hands of him."

Then Shinji slowly raised his head up, looking at the board and the woman under his messy hair. They couldn't see his eyes, otherwise there would've been greater degrees of woe from each of them.

"NERV will assume full responsibility for any of his faults," the woman told them.

"You'd best hope you can handle him," they all told her back.

-x-

"…Now, I'm sure as some of you are more than aware, Shinji Ikari's being transferred out of the Japan Institute of Insanity to the NERV facility in Tokyo-3 here," said Kozo Fuyutsuki to several members of the staff at NERV HQ. "Now, back in Two-Thousand-Six, Shinji was arrested for the death and mutilation of at least eight people, each one murdered in a grim fashion. However, despite having eight counts of first-degree murder on his record, he was convicted of only three of the murders."

"Why is that?" One of the technicians, Maya Ibuki, questioned.

"Because the three he murdered last were his aunt, uncle and cousin," explained her co-worker, Makoto Hyuga. "And, according to the gossip that occurred before the deaths became public knowledge, they were the cause of him resorting to murder at such a young age."

"And I thought my family was weird," expressed Shigeru Aoba. "Sub-Commander, if he's been incarcerated in the institute ever since the day he was found guilty of murder, why have him brought here if he doesn't even know what's going on? He has no training, whatsoever. There's even a likely possibility that he might not be cooperative."

"The order came from Commander Ikari," Fuyutsuki answered him.

"What bothers me about his kid," went Ritsuko Akagi to them all, "is that he hasn't spoken a word ever since that night he did them in, so says his record."

"Probably his way of coping with what he did," suggested Shigeru. "Are we really that desperate to defeat the Angels that we resort to letting out a killer?"

"We're already facing bad press," said Maya. "Some of the people have considered themselves to be people of change, but not with this boy. They all had the same opinion: Shinji Ikari needed to spend the rest of his life locked away where he couldn't hurt anybody."

-x-

Bad press was right. The moment Shinji was being transferred out of the institute, the majority of Tokyo-3's population, mostly families that were concerned with their children's safety, were uncomfortable with a killer living among them. They were holding picket signs with words to show that they viewed Shinji Ikari as a psychopath. There were even people angry enough to gang up on the car transporting him into the city the moment they found out he was in it.

"IKARI KILLER CHILD!" The angry mob chanted, rattling the car with the boy inside.

But Shinji ignored their raised voices, which were no different from running water to him. In the abyss of his mind, where he spent most of his years ever since he was incarcerated, he was lost within a labyrinth of a city without people…and his only company…was another boy that looked just like him, except he had his face exposed and wore broken restraints with his dirty clothes, standing in front of a younger Shinji with a sad expression. It was also here, in the isolation of his mind, where he could utter as many words as he wanted to and not be looked down for anything he said, even if it was only a question or just an opinion.

"That man lives here, doesn't he?" The younger Shinji asked the older one that looked detached from the world.

"He does," the older one answered.

"You…will make him regret abandoning me…won't you?"

"He will be punished for his sins, along with any that stand in the way of closure and justice."

"You're a cold person," the younger Shinji expressed, crouched on the ground in front of his older self.

"In a cold world, a person must be just as cold in order to survive," the older boy responded. "At least…until all the people that have caused you heartache and grief are dealt with. Only then…can the end of this miserable life end with the feeling of warmth."

The younger Shinji sighed in agreement with his older self and expressed, "Do whatever you have to, but leave the innocent be."

"Shinji, nobody is innocent, not even the innocent."

"You know what I mean."

"Of course I do. I'm just testing your sense of reason. You're the light to my darkness."

SMASH! Shinji, broken from his internal conversation, didn't even react to the glass behind his head being shattered.

"You brought a killer child into our city!" A woman cried out. "How could you do this?! Are you nuts?! Are you an organization of crazies?!"

There was no answer for such questions that NERV was willing to give the public, which only made the people more outraged against the organization's possession of a sociopathic child convicted on three counts of murder in the first degree…and he murdered at least eight people. They felt there should've been justice served for the other five lives he took, not just those of his relatives that he decided to send to the next world.

-x-

Slowly walking into the large, dark chamber, Shinji, even if his hair wasn't obscuring his vision, couldn't make out much of anything in front of him. His cuffs made of metal without chains itched his wrists as he was made to stop in front of a desk.

"It's been a long time," he heard a man's voice say to him, and his fists tightened as he raised his head up to get a better look at the man that was, as far as he was concerned, the last person on his vendetta list. "You look like you haven't had a bath in years."

His fingernails, which were unkempt, dug into his palms and pierced the flesh, spilling his blood out. He didn't need to show his face to let his anger be known; the tightened fists were evident enough to the sub-commander behind his father.

"He…doesn't seem very talkative," said Fuyutsuki, wondering how unstable the boy might've been after spending less than a decade in the loony bin.

It was just a half-truth; in his mind, Shinji was just talkative to himself in his isolation.

"He's not making this easy for me," the older Shinji told his younger self.

"Don't make it subtle, then," the younger boy responded. "You're my hall of clarity. Make yourself heard by him by being clear."

"How do I do that? You're the one with the power of speech. I'm just the one that moves the arms and legs. You're the will of the mind, and I'm the will of the body…that carries out the resulting cause."

"He never listened to anything I had to say. Nobody did, so I have nothing to say."

"Not vocally."

"Not vocally."

"Actions speak louder than any words ever could?"

"Who listens to a child's voice, anymore?"

"You mean, who would listen to you?"

"Silence has been my unwanted blessing, speech a forsaken curse, and isolation a cruelty forced upon me by those that viewed me as a burden, not a person."

"So…what must I do, in order to be clear?"

"Just do…what you do."

"With the greatest of displeasure."

Outside the maze of his mind, Shinji continued to glare at his father beneath his messy hair, now dripping blood on the floor from his fists.

"…Are you even listening to a word I've been saying to you?" Gendo, who had been running his mouth to the boy, questioned, as he hadn't spoken a single word as a response to him about working for NERV on an important goal. "Answer."

But Shinji remained silent; to others, it was suggested that spending the length of time he spent incarcerated had left him no different from a mute. Of course, Gendo had taken a look at his son's file, but it was just a look; he had lost interest in the boy long ago, so much of any understanding on his psyche was up to discussion. He never even attended the trial or resulting sentencing to the institute, but found it odd that, while never speaking, Shinji wasted his time by drawing one picture after another, provided he had the materials, which seemed to be a necessity, as he did nothing else. He even once heard of a rumor that he reacted with hostility to any that so much as touched his drawings, which didn't make any sense.

SMACK!

"Aaaahh!" The guard on Shinji's left was knocked down by him.

"Hey!" The guard on his right moved in to detain him, but Shinji head-butted him in his jaw, knocking him down. "Aaaaurgh!"

Shinji stood atop the first guard and set his right foot down on his crotch.

"Aaaaurgh!" The guard screamed in agony. "Get this lunatic off me!"

As the other guard got up, Shinji reacted faster and grabbed him by his neck, choking him.

"Gaaaah! Gaaaagh!" He choked on the air the boy was squeezing out of him.

WHACK! Shinji had failed to notice several more guards having entered the room and one struck him with a baton on his back. He fell to the ground and passed out. The guards dragged him out of the office while Fuyutsuki was left wondering how the boy could pull off what he just did when he looked like he had been reduced to a pathetic shell.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to bring him here, Ikari?" He asked Gendo. "He seems to lack any degree of understanding you."

"He may need to be monitored more thoroughly," Gendo responded.

-x-

"That kid nearly killed one of the guards and stomped another's testicles into the next world," gossiped one of the technicians to the others.

"The commander was trying to persuade him to work as a pilot for the Eva, but the boy didn't speak up," revealed another technician. "Instead, he tried to choke one of the guards. I heard he's getting an MRI to see what his brain's supposed to be like."

"Thirty yen says he's got nothing in that skull of his."

"Sixty yen says he's not even human."

As the gossiping and betting went on, Ritsuko was initiating the MRI on the unconscious Ikari boy…and was shocked at the resulting scans.

"What…in God's name?" She questioned, never expecting something like this to be possible.

"My God," gasped her protegee, Maya, amazed and terrified at the same time.

It wasn't until Gendo and Fuyutsuki were informed that more gossiping was spread, but it was both commanders of NERV that were startled by the analysis conducted upon the boy's head.

"Are you sure the scanner was functioning normally?" Fuyutsuki asked her.

"I've double-checked twice and rechecked," the faux-blond expressed. "The scans were all the same. The boy's brain…is the size of a golf ball."

"How can he function with a brain that small?"

"My theory? His reduced brain only seems to be able to perform simple functions, such as walking and breathing. However, I did further investigation in his neurological scans and his abnormal brain might be the least of whatever problems we might have with him."

"Elaborate," Gendo told her.

"Further scans of his brain indicate that he might be subject to a personality disorder…along with an electrolyte instability, indicating insomnia." Ritsuko explained further.

"You mean to say that he hasn't been sleeping much?" Fuyutsuki questioned.

"None of these factors are something that could've happened in one or two years. His eyes were blood-shot. I'm talking totally red. This had to been going on longer than a year or two. Possibly ever since he was locked away…and nobody knew."

"Didn't the staff at the institute ever examined him regularly?" Fuyutsuki questioned, wondering how an institute like the one Shinji resided in could disregard such crucial needs.

"Apparently not. No medication, no surgeries, no therapy, not even conversations. They locked him away and that was that."

"But they still let him draw those pictures of his," went Gendo, wondering about that factor.

"Yeah, that's what he did. It was really all he ever did while there. All he did was draw, draw, draw. Probably how he deals with what can be viewed as an eternity. If it's all accurate, he might not be of any use to the Evangelion program." Ritsuko shared her belief; she honestly didn't view Shinji as a dumb person, but rather a numb person because of the constant isolation. "We could try brainwashing him, but with the way his brain functions, and the size of its contents, we risk causing greater damage that could limit his body functions."

Gendo felt he was at a loss here. He didn't mind his son being a case of insanity or sociopathy, but a case of deformity was another problem. If anything, the constant drawing habit could've indicated Shinji still possessed the limited mentality of a toddler, but the possibility of a personality disorder was something to be considered. He might have to consider locking his son away in another institute, as he had to consider that he was on no use to NERV…or any organization for that matter, except perhaps a research group that studied special cases and then did away with them.

Suddenly, alarms were going off and Ritsuko's phone rung, prompting an answer from the faux-blond.

"Yes?" She went, but then went wide-eyed. "What do you mean? I thought he was sedated!"

She hung up and told the commanders that they now had a problem on their hands.

-x-

Nobody had expected this to happen, and nobody really wanted to believe it. Without any warning, Shinji Ikari had escaped from the room he was being examined in and single-handedly killed seven guards. The rest of NERV was put of yellow alert, though a few feared it would reach red alert. The reason for such a fear was what was written on the wall in the room the guards were murdered in.

"Either he was on steroids or he had a massive adrenaline rush," said Misato, as she examined the corpses. "These guys were either stomped to death, asphyxiated, or had their necks snapped by him."

"We got bigger problems," one of the other guards that was elsewhere when the escape took place revealed. "Their guns and ammunition are gone."

"He's armed himself," Misato lamented heavily. "Any idea of what that means on the wall?"

On the wall, written in blood, was a series of words that suggested that Shinji, even with a tiny brain, wasn't dumb enough to be unable to leave a message. It read, "Father, you have lived at the peak for long enough. You are going to realize your idiocy soon enough, and then wonder how you thought you could live your life on your own terms, and leave me the way you did with those that gave me the drive to do what I did to get locked away. What you did to me back when I was little, I will do to you, in a harsher fashion, in ten days' time. If you think you're safe from me…you are wrong…and soon to be nothing more than a memory in the abyss of agony. Any that get in my way will know the same fate."

"I'd call it a death threat, Captain Katsuragi," one of the technicians expressed. "One meant for Commander Ikari. It's his kid that did this all."

"And he's willing to murder anyone else he has to in order to get to his old man," another technician expressed his woes.

"No," Misato corrected. "The message says that any that get in his way will know the same fate he intends for his father. It's a personal vendetta, plain and simple. Shinji Ikari doesn't have it out for everyone. He just wants his old man out of the picture…and is willing to murder those that try to stop him from achieving that goal."

The question of the boy's questionable intelligence was explored further by his recent actions in escaping. He had murdered a female technician and relieved her of her security card to escape from the facility and killed another technician for his shirt and belt. Along the way, he had shot out any cameras that were visible, but the people that were fortunate to see him on the monitor were surprised to see that he knew how to handle a firearm, despite having never used one before.

"Okay, we gotta notify the police and warn the people," said Misato. "Our priority is finding the Third Child and containing him."

NERV had been prepared to deal with the threat posed by the Angels, but they had been unprepared to deal with a sociopath that now had a murder sheet of seventeen victims and a willingness to murder more in order to get to his father in the time he had revealed he was going to use in order to do so. The boy was driven to accomplish his goal and end his vendetta, and he was determined to not let anybody stand between him and his objective.

-x-

The city was quiet tonight. And lonely. Shinji liked it that way; there was no one he had to hurt that got in his way. With a makeshift sack of guns and ammo, he had some firepower to last him a while…and he had made himself heard without the power of speech.

As he walked down the empty streets, he stopped and turned to gaze at the reflective glass windows on his left, seeing, in the lonely darkness, his current state. When you looked past the blood that was splattered upon his clothes, all you could see…was a filthy teen that had never known the pleasure of personal hygiene or just a hot bath or shower, with a messy head of matted hair that was like a mop unused in years. Beneath the dirt and blood, Shinji saw nothing that could be viewed as a person. He had been locked away in a cold, dark place with only the freedom of drawing as his luxury; he'd known no other form of pleasure. And looking past the glass, he saw that the building in front of him was a convenience store full of necessities…and anger boiled within him.

He raised his right fist and shattered the glass in front of him. He shattered it all away until it was safe for him to enter the store. Life had been cruel to him, so he was going to indulge along the path of retribution and suffering.

To be continued…

A/N: I know there have been several cases of Shinji being portrayed as different from his anime and manga counterparts, but what if he were pushed over the edge in his early childhood and did things that marked him as a lost cause? Also, what if he were engage in conversations with himself that nobody was aware of, where he spoke with another as a result of repressed guilt or pain, and this other person was able to carry out the tasks that he couldn't do personally? Please, look at this chapter and give a response. I want to see where this will lead, knowing it will be extreme.


	2. A lot can happen in a day

Creation began on 08-14-13

Creation ended on 08-16-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Maddening Cause: A lot can happen in a day

A/N: There is a fine line between purity and defilement. The pure and the defiled, innocent and guilty.

Tokyo-3 was in mass hysteria! The morning news had revealed that the paramilitary agency, NERV, had unwittingly let loose Shinji Ikari. Most residents were uncomfortable with the fact that a killer was out in the city that most parents were unwilling to let their children out of the house to attend school. Such was the case with Horaki family, despite the protests of Hikari Horaki insisting that she be in school as her position as class representative demanded it.

"No way are we letting any of you out there while that lunatic is loose on the streets," her father expressed his persistence that his three daughters remain indoors.

"But the police will catch him, won't they?" Hikari's youngest sister asked. "I mean, everyone's looking for him, right?"

"Yeah," answered her eldest sister, "except that nobody's sure where he'll pop up if he decides to satisfy his murderous thirst and…he spent over eight years in a loony bin for murdering eight people at the age of five."

"Do all bad, little boys get sent to jail for that?" The youngest sister asked, curious.

"Just that Ikari boy," said Mr. Horaki. "What was that man thinking when he asked for his son to be transferred out of the institute? He was probably asking for trouble the second he brought him here."

-x-

Barring the nation's self-defense forces, the city was on high-alert for the wanted killer. But there was high doubt that he would be found in just a day. There were plenty of places for him to hide, but it was a labyrinth of a city to find a rat without a nest to go back to. Some of the police on the search gave opinions that Shinji Ikari was the Devil's bastard child, with the Devil being Gendo Ikari, who brought him here, and gifted him with evasion.

"We got a problem," one of the cops on the unit assigned to monitor activity on the eastern side of the city reported, as the unit was at a convenience store with a busted window. "We think that the boy's been at a convenience shop over in the eastern part of the city."

"He was here," one the female cops revealed, showing a pair of filthy pants that Shinji had been reported wearing prior to being brought into the city. "Looks like he was doing a little shopping."

"How much was missing?"

"Not that kind of shopping. The registers were untouched. He helped himself to everything else, however. He must've been here for a short time getting supplies. Why steal money when what you want is right there for the taking?"

"There was no security, so there was no one for him to murder for anything. There was also no surveillance cameras here, so there's no way to identify or track whatever it is he took from here."

"One thing's for sure," said another lady cop. "If he discarded his old clothes for new ones, he's probably hiding out in plain sight. By blending in with the people, he'd be as safe as he were hiding in the darkness."

Now the police had to be on the lookout for everybody that could've been Shinji Ikari, which meant searching the places teens often went to: Libraries, arcades, food courts and so on. This wasn't something they were looking forward to. If it were rapists, thieves, wife-beaters, adult murderers, they'd be on it like there was no tomorrow. All they had on a killer child was limited to what he did in the past…and whatever facts that NERV and the Japanese Institute of Insanity were keeping quiet about when the former got him from the latter.

-x-

Of course, finding him was easier said than done, but there was no sense in doing so in a city's more advanced portions. Why would Shinji be anywhere near places with security cameras and highly-trained guards? But Shinji, despite his social ineptness, wouldn't be found there. He was elsewhere, outside the city limits on the countryside, just wasting time.

It had been far too long since he'd been anywhere without restrictions, walls, fences or other physical boundaries that hindered him. He raised his left hand against his head and pushed the shortened strands of his clean, cut and shiny, ebony hair back for him to put on a blue cap. Just last night, he was filthy boy that spent the better part of nearly nine years in an institute drawing pictures that held more than his creativity, and now, it was like he was almost reborn as a new person. Though still ruled by his past and leading himself toward a dark and unforgiving future, he lacked the face that represented his ill-treatment by others and looked like he could fit in with a crowd of cool kids: A body purged of the dirt and grime he accumulated over the years, teeth freed of the awful food he couldn't stomach, and a pair of black pants, a red turtleneck sweater and a brown overcoat that felt good on, along with a duffel bag for all his guns and ammo.

It was just going to be a day of unnecessary involvement with anyone stupid enough to find him and try to recognize him as someone on the most wanted list. A really calm day, without any walls, restraints or people tasked with watching him to keep him in check. He looked at it as a well-deserved getaway, one he'd been denied for too long.

The sounds of the cicadas were a minor irritation, but the sight of the trees and flowers were more than welcoming in his split mind. He went over to a tall tree and climbed its trunk up to a big branch and sat on it against the trunk to do nothing. The grand sight of the countryside was something of gracious beauty to. The hills and mountains, the trees, the small birds, and the butterflies. It left him wondering if the afterlife was as beautiful as this wonderful sight.

Unfortunately, he knew he'd be denied such an entrance to the place that was paradise for his actions. But it was all he knew, other than drawing. It was all he had. The choice had been made easy the night he heard his aunt and uncle talking about him after he'd been struck for standing up to his cousin's ill-opinion about his parents (back when he knew nothing about who his parents were). To recall that awful time was as unpleasant as his nights without rest, where sleep often eluded him for hours or days.

He leaned back and let time waste away. Time…wasted away…like blood decaying beneath your fingers as it dried.

-x-

"…There's been no sight of him so far in the city," said Misato to Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, reporting the current situation. "It's like he vanished."

"Very well," Fuyutsuki responded. "Continue searching. Ikari will have my ass if he's not found soon."

"Oh, and at least seven boxes full of Shinji's drawing came from the institute this morning," Misato informed him, pointing to the boxes.

"He had enough drawings to fill up seven boxes?" Fuyutsuki was shocked to see this, and looked to examine one of the boxes and held up a few drawings, surprised to find some of them depicting murder and madness. "Oh, my God."

"One of the staff back there told me that he doesn't like it when people touch his drawings," Misato advised him. "He must've harmed someone the first time he had his drawings touched by people he didn't want them touched by. Hmm? What do you make of this one here?"

She picked up a drawing, taking a risk and praying that Shinji wasn't within the facility and watching them touch his art. The picture she picked up depicted a large face that looked like it had been skinned and had plates of metal placed on small areas of its sides, within a large chamber. It made Fuyutsuki think back to that day he last saw Shinji as an innocent, carefree child. The day his mother did the Contact Experiment with the Eva.

_Does he still remember that day?_ He wondered, unsure if Shinji's abnormal brain held much capacity for memories. _It'd be crazy if he did. Like how he's able to use a gun when he's never held one a day in his life, according to his profile from the institute._

Meanwhile, in a secret meeting between Gendo and SEELE, Gendo was trying to quell the situation revolving around the missing Third Child.

"It seems your little attempt to acquire an additional pilot for the Evas has become a lost cause, Ikari," said SEELE 01 to him.

"We'll find him in due time," Gendo tried to reassure them. "He'll come back."

"Only because he has made a threat on your life," went SEELE 05 to him. "We have reviewed the boy's psyche profile and it seems he has not developed in any way required for piloting an Evangelion. Has he even seen it the day you brought him here?"

"That is none of your concern. He will pilot the Eva, as scheduled."

"How can you be so sure of that?" SEELE 11 questioned Gendo. "Considering his past actions, in addition to his actions taken yesterday, all he understands is murder and hate. He's a perfect example of mankind being the only species capable of hating itself. If he persists, he must be dealt with."

"It won't come to that."

"Let us hope, for your sake, that what you say is true. Be warned, Ikari. You are not the only one that we have capable of fulfilling our goal." SEELE 01 told Gendo, and the black monoliths disappeared from sight, leaving Gendo very pissed at his son.

If it wasn't his son running away from NERV (and murdering people in the process and arming himself), it was the fact that SEELE had to hope, for his sake, that the next amount of blood that would be shed wouldn't be his own. The Angels wouldn't arrive for another month, and he was being threatened with death that could come in the next ten days. Nine days, unless today wasn't the first day and yesterday, when Shinji escaped, was. And yet, the message written in blood he couldn't call the childish intimidation of a boy throwing a tantrum, not when the boy killed less than eighteen people.

"You shouldn't have left me," said a voice behind him, and he reacted in fear, turning to look at whoever it was, and seeing nobody.

He had imagined hearing someone speaking to him.

-x-

"…It's probable that he may still have some measure of recollection of what happened back when he was a little over three years old," went Ritsuko Akagi to Kozo Fuyutsuki, who had shown the head of the Evangelion program some of Shinji's drawings that depicted what the elder was convinced were memories translated onto paper. "But how much he remembers is uncertain."

"I fear he may actually remember everything that happened back then," Fuyutsuki expressed, worried that the boy might be unstable in the extreme. "This is what the Eva he saw over ten years ago looked like when it was unfinished during the Contact Experiment. And this… He hasn't seen anybody in years, but he was able to draw people he'd seen before, and one of those people was his mother. He drew her, depicting her on the last day she was alive."

Fuyutsuki showed her the next drawing that made him worry about the boy, and saw that Shinji was, without a doubt of sanity, quite the artist, despite not having any lessons. The drawing of the woman had an angular facial structure, a mop of brownish hair with pageboy bangs, and had on a suit that, interestingly enough, looked like a plugsuit with little wings on its back. If anything, most of the drawings showed how much the past had consumed Shinji's creativity and inspiration. It would be worse if the boy's past had detrimental effects that were yet to manifest…but would in due time.

Ritsuko turned the drawing over and noticed something that didn't seem normal: There were two different dates on the paper, one for when the drawing was made…and another that was long before the drawing was made. It was like the boy's work was truly inspired by events past.

"Do any of these dates mean anything to you?" She asked Fuyutsuki, who re-examined the papers, and had wide eyes that did his wrinkled face injustice.

"The date underneath the upper date was the day of a Contact Experiment gone wrong," he explained.

-x-

In his dreams, it was no different from the place he resided in within his mind where he engaged in conversations with his other self. The city that was a labyrinth, full of mist and decay, a vast and lifeless chunk of worthlessness, was where he found himself again.

"How are you enjoying your day, Shinji?" The older self asked the little boy version, still represented by his filthy appearance.

"It has been quiet, subtle, and that word people call 'remarkable'," the little boy answered him. "Is this what it feels like when you're away from places that have walls and rules?"

"You mean, when you escape from those that lock you away, because escape isn't freedom. Escape is running…until you're either caught and returned to that awful pit of existence once more…or you return of your own decision…and do what you're going to do."

"I have never had a day where I wasn't inside a place where I couldn't do anything without getting looked down because of something I might've said or did that others viewed as wrong."

"And now?"

"Now…now it feels good to get away from it all, to have a day on the outside, to do what I want and not have to hear people put me down for it all, regardless of whether it was good or bad. Is that what they call a vacation?"

"I wouldn't know about that word, but it would make sense to view it as such, as there is freedom to have a day to yourself, to feel the thrill of getting away from everyone."

As an old building behind the younger version crumbled to the ground, the dirty version looked up at the foggy sky. If there was ever a sun inside a person's mind, it died within Shinji's long ago, leaving a series of clouds that were a cheap substitute for sunlight, and the dirty boy sighed as though something seemed wrong.

"What is it?" The little boy asked him.

"There are people coming," he answered. "We need to wake up and get away further."

"Good people or bad people?"

"No clue. Wake up."

Shinji opened his eyes and looked below the branch and at the ground, seeing that there were people coming nearby. He was set to climb down until he saw that it was just a little boy and a man and woman. Only a trio, probably a family, even, and they were sure to be of no threat to him. So he sat back down on the branch and did what he didn't expect himself to do: He watched them walk about the grassy field, seeing whatever it was they were up to.

The boy was playing with a kite while the man and woman were setting up for a picnic in the warm afternoon. There was laughter, giggles, incoherent babbling that Shinji could only assume were the telling of jokes. His best guess was that they were a family, one that was happy, which didn't sit too well for Shinji. Leaning back against the trunk as he continued to watch the family, he recalled days where there weren't family-related events he partook on. At least none where he was old enough to recall what had happened.

As the woman handed a sandwich to the boy, Shinji thought back to a day where his mother took him swimming, but it wasn't the fact that it was one of the only days she was involved in his life; it was what she said to him that echoed in his mind. Something about doing something to help others later in life. For all he could care to admit, if to himself and not others, it related to the monster he saw years ago, which looked like a bloody robot with muscles and plates of metal patches. What she said to him, did to him, and what happened afterward, was enough to make him sick enough to vomit…if he had anything in his stomach that didn't agree with him.

Still, there wasn't anyone out here looking for him, so there was no need to vent out any measure of hatred against those that did him no wrong or got in his way. Then again, due to other factors in his past, he never felt any degree of the need to be cruel toward those that didn't give a damn about him to the point where they didn't come looking for him. That's what made him threaten NERV with the promise of death if they got between him and Gendo; if there were those that understood him enough to stay out of his way, they would be spared. He hated his life, his childhood taken and thrown away, who he ended up with the day his father abandoned him after his bitch of a mother died, but he didn't have any hatred for the world; the world was a big place, and he only lived in Japan, which had people that hated him. He knew nothing of the United States of America and its people, Australia, China, which was full of Japan's equally-artistic cousins, Russia, or any other places on the planet, so he couldn't feel any sort of negative emotion toward them.

The little boy then hugged the woman and Shinji shut his eyes to process this all (and escape the wonderful sight that he had never truly experienced in his own past. It wasn't anger he was filling in his heart at the moment; it was envy. And people demonstrated that feeling in many ways, either venting it in anger, or keeping it locked away. But not Shinji; he redirected his envy and turned it into a source of strength to carry out his agenda, which to soon go back to Gendo and kill him. It was all he had left…all he had left to live for, and when that was that, nothing else would matter.

There would be no further reason to go on.

-x-

"…This kid should've been in art classes," said Misato, looking through some of the other drawings made by Shinji over the years of his incarceration. "He seems versed in drawing things associated to light and darkness. There's awe and joy in the good things he's drawn…and torture and sadism in the bad ones."

"And it looks like with each drawing, he escalates," added Ritsuko, trying to look for specific drawings by looking at the dates written on the backs. "Hmm…if you love what you do, you get good at it. I guess he loves to draw, if it's been the only thing he did since he was sentenced to the asylum."

They, along with Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki and the Bridge Bunnies were sorting away at the drawings based on the dates, as ordered by Commander Ikari. Whatever it was they were looking for along the way might've been within the drawings, as the head of NERV was shown one of the drawings that was a detailed picture of his dead wife.

"Ugh," shuddered Maya Ibuki, as she dropped one of the drawings that gave her goosebumps on the small of her spine.

Hyuga picked the drawing up and saw why his co-worker was disgusted: A woman, probably in her late-thirties, depicted lying on the ground after being stabbed around several times in many areas of her body, including her head, leaving blood spilling from the cuts. It made him look through the ones he had sorted through and picked up another drawing; this one showed what had to be Shinji as a little boy, emotionless, holding a knife in the Nineteen-Eighties' slasher-style, both covered in blood.

"Man, this is twisted," he sighed. "This kid murdered his aunt, and he draws it some time later."

Shigeru looks at the two drawings that appeared to go together and soon wished he hadn't.

"What kind of sick mind does this and later turns it into art?" He questioned.

Fuyutsuki looks at the ones he's sorting through and utters, "These aren't pieces of art. He wasn't drawing make-believe most of the time. These are records. They're memories. His memories, described the way he views them."

"He drew his own memories of past events for the last eight-and-a-half years?" Hyuga asked, and looked through some of the other drawings and picked up a new one. "Check this one out. Looks he killed a man by bashing his head several times with a hammer."

"My God," Fuyutsuki shuddered, picking up a new drawing that had to go with the one Hyuga held up. "That's his uncle. He murdered his uncle with a hammer after he had been reported to have bound him duct tape so he couldn't get away or be heard screaming as he was having his brain turned into hamburger meat."

"Aaahh!" Maya gasped, having gone through several other drawings and finding four of them that depicted Shinji's simpler-but-brutal efficiency at murder. "The little girl that people said had shoved him at one point… The Kinomoto girl… He smothered her with her own stuffed animals."

A girl, no older than five years, with short, brownish hair and blue eyes, before a stuffed bear had replaced her face…and her after she was deprived of oxygen, looking like she had almost been asleep were it not for her eyes being open. This was one of the other five murders Shinji hadn't been convicted of before his incarceration. Along with the girl had been a cop off-duty when the other murders took place, two other women that spoke of Shinji in cold tones behind his back, and another little boy that spoke his mind about Shinji, based on what other people had said about him, based on what opinions they had on his parents. They had found the drawings depicting all five victims that never received justice against the former little boy that took their lives.

"How the Hell could this kid kill all these people? He was barely five years old. He was tiny, weak and innocent," said Hyuga to the others.

"As the police and gossipers once said," went Ritsuko, explaining the reason. "He just snapped."

-x-

The sun slowly started to disappear behind the mountains, and Shinji was starting to wander about again, walking along a path that led him further and further away from the city. The day wasn't over yet, and he still had time to waste. He decided to climb up a mountain path, wanting to see what the ground looked up from the top of a triangle made of stone. As the day turned to night, he started from a small nobody to a somebody that people couldn't stop talking about for what he did…just going up a mountain and wanting to see what the world looked like from up high.

"To go up a mountain alone, one can view as a rite of passage, Shinji," in his mind, the dirty side of him spoke out to the younger side.

"Really?" The little boy asked. "I've never gone up a mountain before, so why could it be called a rite of passage?"

"Because the boy that climbs the mountain by himself…comes back down a man…and no one dares to call him a fool again."

"Oh…"

More of the barren city the two resided in had been damaged further, with many tall buildings crumbling down and the streets, which were already cracked, now sporting big holes that led into darkness. Even the dirty teen was filthier than ever. It was as though, with the passage of time, the place grew more ugly until there was nothing left to even consider there was anything there at all.

Outside his mind, he continued to climb up the mountain, taking periodical stops to turn around and see what the world beneath him looked like. He soon crossed a boundary of parched soil and stone…and stepped on ground covered in white. It looked like ancient snow, untouched for many years. He stopped and grabbed a handful of it; if it was snow, this was the first time he ever touched it. The snow on this mountain was the closest he had come to experiencing winter, something this nation might never experience again because of some catastrophe that happened before he was even thought of.

His facial expression, never showing positive emotion, could've almost lit up at the sensation of snow. He dropped onto his back and flapped his arms around. When he got up, he had made a snow angel…yet, he still didn't smile. But it didn't matter; he still had the rest of this day to waste…and the rest of a mountain to climb.

-x-

"…Despite his brain being small, it is apparent, based on the drawings, that the Third Child has total recall of past events," Ritsuko explained to Gendo, showing some of the drawings to him in his office with Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki. "I'll have to continue going over the scans taken from his MRI, but there's probably something more wrong with him."

"Wrong with him?" Fuyutsuki asked him.

"Based on one of the scans, I have reason to believe that the boy might have a tumor located on the left side of his crown," she explained. "If it's accurate, there's no telling how long he's had it or if he's even fit to pilot an Evangelion…even if he seems capable of murdering people and laying out threats of death to people and evading the police."

Gendo looked at each of the drawings, each of his son's victims, and had to admit that this was not going at all like what he had anticipated or planned for Shinji. Not only did he recall everything from the past, but in clear detail, down to the appearance of his wife and the Eva before it was completed. And now his son may have a tumor somewhere on his pathetic brain.

"Have the police been able to find him?" He asked them.

"No," Fuyutsuki answered him. "There have been no sightings…or recent deaths. It's like he disappeared completely. They're doing door-to-door searches for anyone that might've seen anyone suspicious, but they have doubt that he'll turn up. If he took any clothes from the store he broke into, there's no way to track them because people buy clothes almost everyday."

"In addition, he might've changed his identity by merely cutting his hair. The police said one of the washrooms had been used and a pair of scissors and razor blades were found left behind, along with piles of hair. Remember, when people saw him arriving, they saw a filthy fourteen-year-old. Now, he'd probably be no different from any other fourteen-year-old boy."

"We may have to round up all male children within the city," Fuyutsuki suggested. "Not many of the families here wanted their children outside today."

Gendo sighed and picked up the drawing of Yui; for some reason, he felt that he should keep this picture close by. He had to ponder how to deal with Shinji when he came back for him, and figure out how to avoid being killed by him, as his hallucination from earlier had him a little jumpy to the point where he had to beef up his personal security.

-x-

As the night took over what was left of the day, the hike up the mountain grew colder, but Shinji didn't stop. If climbing up a mountain alone was a rite of passage for a boy, then he would pass that rite, going up a boy…and coming back down a man, and only his father would be the fool with fear. For all he'd known, which was extremely little, he'd been a boy ever since he'd been abandoned and condemned by the people that hurt him. If he came down the mountain after reaching the top, he'd be on the same level as any adult, earning him some measure of what people called respect. He had taken their bullshit for too long…and soon, it would be payback time.

The stars were bright and the air cold, but he kept on walking up the path he took…until suddenly…

"Shinji," went his sociopathic self, as he found himself within his mind once more, "you did it."

"I did?" The child self asked, just he found himself back in the real world, on a flat surface…with nothing up ahead to progress upon.

"You made it up the top," the sociopath expressed once more, as their mental surrounding now had a blanket of snow everywhere. "The boy climbs up the mountain alone…and will come back down a man…whom no one can call a fool, ever again."

Shinji rose up onto his feet, seeing the world below. The lights of Tokyo-3 far and sparkling, with the countryside a dark green patch. This was a sight that he would keep for what was the rest of his life. For the first time in a long time, he truly felt free. He felt like he could do anything now, and not just because he had when he was a boy, but because no one helped him do this task. He was now a mountain in his own right, and he could no longer bow to the howling winds that were the rest of the world. This had become the greatest defining moment of his first day away from the shackles of his tormentors and, perhaps, the best day of his life.

It was a day well-wasted…and a journey well-spent.

To be continued…

A/N: Here's the second chapter completed. Not much happened for Shinji, but for him, it was still a day well-spent doing nothing but being free. He has now touched the world with bloody hands and is just learning to be without a care…until he fulfills his promise to avenge himself against Gendo.


	3. A Father's Dread

Creation began on 08-17-13

Creation ended on 08-22-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Maddening Cause: A Father's Dread

A/N: There are some things a parent should never do without considering all of the consequences that come with the choices made.

_"__…You sent your son away,"_ went Kozo Fuyutsuki to Gendo Ikari. _"Why?"_

"_So that I would have no distractions on the Human Instrumentality Project,"_ he answered the elder. _"I've left him in the care of Yui's relatives."_

"_The last Yui told me, she and her sister weren't on speaking terms."_

"_In this day and age, money talks more than words do."_

In the end, it usually always came down to money. It was what Fuyutsuki wanted to think, but something in his heart told him that it wasn't always the case. Surely, if he had spoken up more in defense of the boy eleven years ago, then Shinji Ikari wouldn't have become the person that the world knows him as today. And what terrified the elder was the potential date that the sociopathic child might've meant for his old man that was to come. If his recollection of past events was accurate as his artistic flare, then the day Shinji would come to murder Gendo…would the same day as the anniversary Yui disappeared in the Contact Experiment he saw when he was barely over three years old.

_Yui, if only you hadn't died that day,_ thought Fuyutsuki, standing in front of Unit-01's head. _Your son's not the little boy he once was, anymore. He's probably hurting deep down. Damaged in his brain, even. He's a monster, and one of the worst kind, too._

-x-

"Attention, people," shouted a woman through a megaphone as she was seen through the roof window of a small car driving on the street. "As some of you are aware, the paramilitary agency NERV had transported the sociopathic Shinji Ikari into the city, and he was reported missing no more than a day ago. For safety reasons, all fourteen-year-old male children must be identified by the police. I repeat: Shinji Ikari has escaped from NERV custody, and, for safety reasons, all fourteen-year-old male children must be identified by the police."

As the car sped away, the few people that were on the sidewalks were comprised of married couples and people that had children, some of which were the age of fourteen. The need to identify all men of that age was probably a precaution to make sure that none of them were Shinji Ikari taking on another identity, which would've been unusual. Some considered heading back home to keep closer tabs on their children while those that had no children considered being on the lookout for any teens that might've been the killer child they heard about on the news years ago. Just because they didn't really know of the boy didn't mean they had to disregard the warnings that, if he was able to murder eight people at the age of four or five, he was more than capable of taking any of their lives if they crossed paths with him.

As this was going on, over at the city's junior high school, two childhood friends were had just entered the school grounds when they heard the girls that were still able to attend talk about the boy that had much of the town on edge.

"My dad almost wouldn't let me come today," one of five girls said to the other four. "He was afraid this Shinji Ikari would kill me if he saw me."

"I heard he once murdered a little girl by choking her with her stuffed animals," went another of the girls. "Then, he killed a boy with a rock or bat."

"Daddy once heard that he stabbed his aunt to death over thirty-six times," the third girl expressed.

"I just read old newspapers, and one report stated that Shinji even murdered a cop one time." Girl Number Four told the rest.

"Say, Toji, do you believe all this?" Kensuke Aida asked his best friend in black.

"Nope," Toji Suzahara answered. "But if I ever see this guy, and he lays a finger on my sister that results in her death, I'd beat him to death to spare the cops the migraine of looking for him any further."

"The cops are gonna be here later today to check if any of us guys are this lunatic. Not many of the parents are going to want to let their kids out of their sight." Kensuke sighed. "They're likely to put him on _Japan's Most Wanted _soon."

"It's sort of stupid, you know. People die almost everyday, and people get terrified of a guy that got put away when he was a little tyke? What is wrong with people these days?"

-x-

He was a man now. He had more clarity in his fragmented mind. There was no denying he had achieved something nobody could do for him last night. Wandering in the abandoned slums of Tokyo-3, Shinji kept to himself…and himself. In a way, the empty buildings, desolate, partially demolished, infested with filthy creatures almost mirrored his mind, since it was abandoned, crumbling down with old buildings, and the only inhabitants were a sad, little boy…and his filthy, older double that was as close to a brother as he had in his life. By keeping to himself, he had a high degree of survival on his own…and with no attachments, no emotional attachments, that is, he could move about more freely.

He stopped in front of a building that was one of several on the block that were in an extreme state of decrepitude, but with some life left in it, even if it was just a mere thread of life. There didn't seem to be anyone residing in any of the rooms, evident by the sight of some doors open or missing off their hinges. Sometimes, the best place to hide from people looking for you wasn't out in plain sight, but in places people abandoned. He walked up some steps until he reached the fourth floor, but stopped when he saw someone a good distance away from him up ahead. It was a girl, probably about his age or so, but what excited his anger a bit was that she, in the most disturbing sense, was an imperfect copy of his mother, except with chalk-white skin and blue hair.

"Who is she?" The younger Shinji asked, in the further-damaged recesses of his mind.

"What is she?" The dirty, sociopathic Shinji questioned. "Do you want to do something about her?"

"No. She hasn't made herself a threat to us, so we shouldn't do to her what isn't necessary unless provoked or we're trying to get away."

In the real world, Shinji never took his eyes off the girl, but sniffed the air in between them, and was disgusted further.

"I don't like her," the sociopath expressed. "She stinks."

"Like defilement?" Little Shinji asked.

"A lot of it…and something else, something far dirtier than we had ever been."

"Let's just…go into the apartment right next to us."

"So help me, Shinji, I want to erase her face from my memory forever."

"When this is all over, we can forget about everything."

"To forget…and be forgotten…is no different from what we did before were locked away."

"You know they deserved it."

"Just as he deserves it. He deserves what's coming to him."

In reality, Shinji, still with his gaze upon the girl, slowly entered the room next to him and shut the door. He locked the locks present and turned around, seeing an empty bedroom…and a rug. Not even sighing at the lack of luxuries, he sat his bag down and took out one of the guns he lifted off the guards he killed escaping from NERV, setting it for when he needed to waste any fool that might be out looking for him. Then, he sat down on the rug and stared up at the filthy ceiling. He was just going to wait around until he felt like going out into the city and stealing what he needed to survive; money was no importance to him, but everything else was a necessity, ignoring ideas of wealth.

-x-

Ritsuko Akagi was at a loss right now. Her protegee, Maya Ibuki, didn't come in today after helping to sort through Shinji's drawings yesterday, and trying to understand what she could from the only MRI scan she got of his brain and nervous system was next to impossible. She deduced that Maya, being the sensitive young woman that she was, couldn't stomach the fact that NERV had wanted a killer as a pilot for the Eva, and that that same killer drew his history on paper with crayons and color pencils inside an insane asylum for a long time. Of course, she didn't blame her for being not being able to stomach violence; Shinji Ikari seemed to experience violence easily by being a victim…and then turning into a psychopath. It reminded her of something written by a man that was fortunate enough to survive Second Impact, despite the devastation caused to him; it was something about a boy and a vampire and the willingness and motivation to kill someone in order to get revenge.

_This is hopeless,_ she thought, setting down the printout of the MRI. _Unless I get another MRI from him, I can't determine if this is a tumor or not on his brain._

Meanwhile, in the medical ward of NERV, Gendo was visiting a mending Rei Ayanami, the First Child, and the primary reason to why he requested the transfer of his son from out the asylum after deliberately forgetting about him. In addition to the increased security around himself, he had increased the security around her as a precaution; even though Shinji had gotten loose and murdered to escape from the base, he could've killed any number of people along the way, including Rei. Some people could've claimed that Gendo, probably close to declaring a bounty be placed upon his son's head, was almost afraid of Shinji after discovering that he would kill him in due time, but if he was afraid, he put up a good front to hide his fear. In truth, many of NERV's personnel were frightened by the would-be Third Child, up to the fact that more than eighty-two people didn't come in today.

And with the attempts the police made to find Shinji, it would be a matter of God-knows-when until he turned up…unless he decided to commit first-degree murder on someone that got in his way. If he chose to kill again, then the police would probably know where and how to deal with him.

Gendo looked over Rei's medical chart and found that if she continued to recover at this rate, she'd be on active duty for piloting the Eva in two weeks. But that made him uneasy; two weeks was four days' too long…and he couldn't stop thinking about the first time he thought he saw Shinji. Perhaps, he feared that his son would make good on his written promise to do away with him, and the fear was made worse when he realized that the day Shinji decided to do so…would be on the same day Yui disappeared in the experiment. Just as people fear the darkness and carve away at it with fire, people feared it when other people decided that there would be those that should be removed from existence, like how he found it ironic for the American government to do away with many of their own people in an attempt to gain sympathy in a plan to attack New York's famous towers that never came to pass because Second Impact prevented that from happening.

"Maybe I should kill her, too," he turned and saw the filth of a person he'd seen his son as before he escaped, holding a gun up at his, eyes locked in the expression of great rage.

"Aaaaahh!" He gasped, but as quickly as he saw Shinji, he wasn't there, anymore. "Ah…ah…"

Seconds after he calmed down, Rei opened her eyes and grumbled as she tried to rise into a sitting position, which was difficult since her left arm was in a cast and sling.

"Rei," Gendo uttered to her.

"I saw…a little boy," she said, looking at him. "He was in a city…that was slowly falling apart. He was with another boy, covered in dirt, with his hair covering his face. The little boy was very sad…and the dirty boy was very mad. They looked at me…and the dirty boy said that he didn't like me…and that he wanted to kill me because I reminded them of someone they knew."

For all Gendo knew, the little boy she was speaking of could've been someone she had seen at school, but a boy covered in filth… It had to be Shinji she was referring to, as he was filthy before he escaped and got cleaned up in a convenience store that had all he could probably need. But the more he thought about the other one, Rei's ability to experience dreams (which should've been stunted into nonexistence to keep her from getting distracted from his goal) could've led to some form of clairvoyance or scrying ability, as her mind was a great mystery most of the time. The little boy could've also been Shinji back from when he was left with his aunt and uncle…before he became homicidal and killed them.

-x-

"…I could've told you that an hour ago, officer," a woman said to the police, about to take her son home after he was confirmed not to be Shinji Ikari.

"Sorry for the near mix-up, ma'am," the man apologized, and then the mother and son left the station.

"That makes one-hundred-fifty-seven boys interviewed today," a lady cop sighed, crossing out another name on her book, "and he checked out."

"If I knew I'd be signing up for a hunt for a killer child, I would've moved to the U.S. a year ago."

"The boy's clearly a loner. He likes to keep to himself, perhaps. Or maybe he's long gone."

"No, if he left the city, why threaten to kill his father in nine more days? Why run away and not come back to do the job?"

"We got cops out all over the city monitoring the streets. If he makes a peep, we'll hear him. Wherever he comes up for air, we'll find him. And when he slips up, he's ours."

"You know something I don't understand? How does he know how to use a gun…and he's been locked away for over eight years and never so much as held one before he was locked away?"

"Most children learn fast. You know what people have come to believe. When you do something you've never done before, you become new to it…and it becomes easy to you."

"I'm gonna look over the boy's file once more. Maybe there's something we overlooked in it."

"Yeah, you do that. I'll be out there helping with the manhunt."

-x-

Walking down the streets without his bag and backup arms, Shinji relied on the shadows and personal distance to move about in the city, while looking for places that were less secure for him to take what he needed and wouldn't put up much trouble for him. Just because hunger wasn't on his mind the last time he resorted to stealing didn't mean he couldn't function without food in him to provide a substantial amount of energy for his body. And he wasn't going to resort to poking around people's trash for leftovers; he needed food, not waste. It was a seemingly-quiet part of the neighborhood he was in, with just a small market with wheels.

As hungry as he was right now, there was no way he could get what needed without drawing much attention to himself, which wasn't what he needed at the moment. So he walked past the mobile supermarket and the people shopping in it in favor of finding another place with less people around. But then he stopped, re-evaluated his hunger situation and turned around to face the market. He didn't need a whole lot of feed, just enough to last him two or three days; during his incarceration, he had learn to fast for long periods of time because the food he was fed was often scarce, and with this fasting, he lost a lot of weight that he needed back then…along with developing a stump in his physical growth that didn't change for two years. As he walked back, he spotted a woman, elderly, walking his way, carrying a small grocery bag full of food. It was his path to replenishment, and he approached her.

"Oh!" The old lady gasped as Shinji stood in front of her, his face creeping her out. "Oh, I'm sorry, sir."

Then, without warning, Shinji grabbed the woman's left arm and snatched the bag from her! He released her and ran like he was going to be chased soon if there were police nearby.

"Someone help!" The old lady shouted, but Shinji just kept running, assured that people would come after him soon.

"Hey, stop!" A male voice called behind him, and he ran into an alley, looked through the bag and started filling his coat pockets with whatever he could. "Stop!"

With his pockets full of the limited food, he threw the rest of the bag away in time to climb a fence that was in front of him. The man behind him failed to catch his left leg and Shinji fell to the ground and continued to run. All he had to show for his theft were two apples, a banana, a bottle of water and a candy bar. It wasn't much, but, then again, he wasn't in need of a lot of food to begin with.

-x-

"…And nobody was able to identify him?" A female cop asked another female cop.

"It was unexpected," the other cop answered. "But from what the old lady said, the guy looked like two things: A tourist…and a thug. We're trying a sketch of the guy so we have better luck finding him. A man that did try to catch him lost him in an alley."

"The guy robs a woman of her groceries, but doesn't try to take her other valuables? That doesn't make sense. Why steal only food?"

They returned to the scene of the crime where the old lady was describing the thief that took her bag.

"…His face looked thin," she tried to recall all the details of her food taker. "Real thin, like skinny. The eyes looked a little red, like he was suffering from Pink Eye or insomnia. And his hair was glossy-black, with short bangs and looking it had been cut by an amateur; it had short strands and long strands, like a wreak."

The sketch artist finished the drawing and then presented it to the woman, who confirmed that her attacker looked exactly like he was described.

"Well, now we know who to look for," the first of the lady cops expressed. "The question now is where to find him?"

-x-

Hiding behind a dumpster, Shinji engorged himself the pathetic feast he had swiped from the woman. There was no time to stop; once he had tasted something that wasn't plain rice, he couldn't let breaks between eating get in the way. The banana peel was tossed aside and he helped himself to the candy bar next. Within his mind, his two selves engaged in conversation.

"I feel like we've been denied the taste of other foods we've not had in a long time," the dirty Shinji told his younger side.

"We might as well enjoy the fruit and candy while we can. All good things must come to an end," the little boy told his teen self.

In the real world, Shinji had just started on his second apple and washed the flavor away with the water from the bottle. It was true that all goods had to come to an end because his meal had been consumed down to the last bite. But it was a good meal, nonetheless because it was something new. He got up from behind the dumpster and resumed his wandering, as he needed to get back to the abandoned building and retrieve his arsenal.

-x-

"…My God," went Ritsuko, having received the sketch of the guy that robbed an old lady of her groceries. "This is him! It's Shinji Ikari."

"What?!" Misato gasped, looking at the sketch. "Whoa! Look at him! He's not at all like he was when I met him at the institute."

"It's called a makeover, Misato. Everyone does it every now and then. But this looks like his first one ever. He discarded his old clothes, got new ones, washed away his filth, massacred his messy hair into a manageable state, and didn't show up until a day later, and that was just to steal again."

"But his first robbery was new clothes," went Hyuga. "This time, all he took was some food from an elder. Why would he do something like that, unless he was just hungry and had no cash on him."

"Yeah, that's right," added Shigeru. "He just took guns and ammunition, clothes and food. He didn't steal money from anyone. And he didn't kill the woman, either. Why spare an older person that can't defend themselves when you take from her what you want?"

"Not want, need," they all heard Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, as he showed up on the bridge in Central Dogma. "He takes guns to protect himself from anybody looking for him to bring into custody, then takes new clothes to alter his appearance and better his anonymity, and then food because he was hungry and hadn't eaten in a while. It's probably part of his plan to kill his father later on; he wants to kill him, but he wants to look nice and be at the top of his game when he does so. Maybe have people remember him, eventually for doing so."

"But I don't understand," said Misato, confused by one detail. "Why'd he let Commander Ikari live when he was brought in two days ago? Why not just kill him when he met him for the first time in many years?"

"Maybe he couldn't at the time," suggested Ritsuko, sharing her theory on the "why". "He wasn't in a state of physical functionality, or maybe he thought his father was armed…"

"Or he wants his father to know that he can kill him, but wants to let him do whatever he has to with the time he's been given," suggested Fuyutsuki. "It's not all that complicated with certain killers. They select their targets, threaten them with death, probably watch them from the shadows sometimes, see what they do when threatened, and then, when it comes for them to be dealt with, they kill them in some fashion while the victim is wrapped up in fear. He wants his father to be afraid of him when he decides to come kill him on the anniversary of his mother's death."

"His mother's death? His mother's death anniversary is in eight more days?" Misato asked him.

Meanwhile, up in his office, Gendo was looking at another copy of the sketch of his son's new look, noting that the boy had the face of a person that knew torment…and nothing else that could wash away any pain he had. It also made him more uneasy with the possibility that he would make an attempt on him on that one day to come. Even with the added security, he couldn't stop panicking at every sight of his son showing up and speaking to him, even when he never did so the first time they met since that day he left him.

"_We have reviewed the boy's psyche profile and it seems he has not developed in any way required for piloting an Evangelion,"_ he remembered the eleventh and fifth members of SEELE's council speaking up about Shinji's mental state.

"_All he seems to know is murder and hate."_

"_And we're to understand that he spent almost nine years in a mental institution after his trial and sentencing, which you, his father, didn't attend." _SEELE's third member had expressed. _"And, based on a report the police wrote after autopsies of his first victims was performed, he seemed to be subject to extreme verbal and physical abuse from anyone that had something to say about you and your past, which prompted him halfway into doing what he did to get locked away."_

"_If he's captured and he still refuses to cooperate," _went the tenth member, _"we should consider the Third Child a lost cause. If he continues to persist, deal with him in any way that is necessary, even if that means you have to kill him."_

Of course, if dealing with Shinji meant murdering the boy before he could murder him, that would throw off Gendo's plans completely. Now, for the first time in years, he was starting to regret not attending his son's trial or even leaving him with people that were more adequate than Yui's relatives and wouldn't drive the boy to do what he did back then. Now, regret and dread were two very different emotions, some of which Gendo viewed as some of the weakest qualities of mankind and why the race was such a pathetic species. And he hated the highest authority in existence that he viewed as the problem for everything in existence, but his own son…his own son didn't show any sort of hatred toward authority higher than the ones that helped to put him away. He himself was a problem in the eyes of his son…and Shinji viewed murder as the ultimate solution to the problem.

-x-

Sometimes, the body had to have a will of its own, or some sort of autopilot when the mind decided to wander off in its own realm, but Shinji made it back to the abandoned building and got his bag. He made sure the safety was off on the first gun he picked up and that it was loaded. With his stomach full and not much time to digest everything, he waited for danger to come after him, just to show that he wasn't what a loser or a weakling. He would take down his father in due time, even if it meant he had to go through the whole city, cops, children and all, to do so.

But to wait for danger was to wait for the inevitability of dying, and to wait for that was to wait for what was constantly seeking new souls to enslave. He could kick back and wait, but that was foolish to do so. Instead, he had to do the very opposite: He had to go embrace the inevitability of unpredictability and the chaotic disorder that engulfed his sanity.

"We could view this as a birthday party," said the younger Shinji to his older self.

"And the people in the way are the ones bringing the party favors," responded the older Shinji.

He walked out the door and into the night…where all forms of sin were covered in the darkness.

-x-

Rei Ayanami awoke again from what felt like another state of being elsewhere, but still being in the recovery ward. In what could've past as a dream, she had seen the same little boy she had seen earlier in another dream steal food from a lady old enough to be his grandmother, and then leave an empty building with a firearm in his hands. The boy had been accompanied by the older boy covered in filth, who was carrying a large bag full of something that she couldn't tell of whatever it was. Why she was always seeing these two in her subconsciousness was a mystery to her that she was starting to seek an answer for.

Unfortunately, Rei hadn't been informed in full detail on the fact that the entire NERV facility had been on high-alert for the whereabouts of a killer. She had, however, been informed that NERV was to be getting a new pilot by the time she recovered from the incident with Unit-00, and that the Second Child and Unit-02 would be in Japan some time after that. It was unsure how she would react, if she was ever to be informed, to the discovery that the Third Child in question was the killer NERV was on the lookout for, was possibly very sick, and had left a death threat against Commander Ikari with the promise to waste him in due time. If she was ever to find out, her reaction would be a mystery to any that barely knew her.

-x-

"It's been almost four days now," went Misato to Ritsuko, conversing in the cafeteria. "Either this kid's a master of evasion…or he's just good at running from the people looking for him."

"I read in the morning papers that there might be a connection between his recent whereabouts and the discovery of three dead guys," Ritsuko told her, sipping her coffee. "They were a bunch of petty criminals. Mostly burglaries and grand theft auto and unregistered guns. The cops found them in one of the older warehouses on the lower east of the city."

"Yeah, I think I read some of that," Misato responded. "What makes you think Shinji was responsible for their deaths?"

"The police found their mini-refrigerator had been sacked, the bodies showed broken necks or bullet holes…and there was a message written in blood on the walls. It read, _"Now, I have a few machine guns under my fingers. Let my dad know that I will not be stopped. These men had it coming when they saw me." _If you ask me, I'd say that those former criminals had found Shinji hiding away and decided to try and turn him in for a reward, only he had the upper hand and killed them."

"But they had to be at least in their forties. How can he be able to kill and avoid getting harmed?"

"That's what I've been looking into," they both looked up at saw Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, who seemed a little older and worn out.

"Sir," they responded.

"At ease, ladies," he told them and then sat down at a table opposite of theirs, looking at a folder. "Ikari told me that it was unnecessary, but I still poked my nose around his son's past at the institute, and found something that doesn't add up. Apparently, during his first year there, he was visited by a child therapist that decided to look into his case."

"But the institute said that he never got visitors," Misato recalled. "Who was the therapist that came to see him?"

"Jericho Higurashi. It turns out he lived in the town three miles from the institute. He met Shinji for four weeks, but then he stopped."

"He decided that Shinji was a lost cause?"

"No, Captain Katsuragi. The Institute barred him."

-x-

Having murdered a few people he had no idea were criminals, Shinji found his arsenal of firepower all the more heavy with steel. Then again, whether the men he murdered with two bullets and his bare hands were criminals or not didn't matter to him; they had stumbled upon him as he was hiding from the authorities in another building, one that, by poor choice of judgment, right across from the warehouse they were hiding in, was of no concern to him. But when he murdered the last guy, he started thinking less about his current point in life and thought of the past, to a man that, without doubt or anger, made some attempt to reach out to him, even when he never spoke back to the guy.

-x-

_Enter Jericho Higurashi_

It was an uneasy two months, but not an intense time for Shinji, who had retreated into drawing pictures and being the quiet child. For some of the guards that kept watch over his cell, drawing was the only way he seemed capable of communication with people, should people ever try to communicate with him.

"Um, excuse me," Shinji heard a voice outside his cell, "is this Shinji Ikari's cell? I'm supposed to see him today."

"Yeah, that's his cell," a guard answered. "Except he's constantly drawing pictures and has shut out everybody around him. He hasn't spoken a word since the night he was arrested."

Shinji ignored the sound of the door opening and closing, along with the breathing of another occupant of his cold and hollow cell.

"Hello, Shinji," said the new person in his cell. "My name is Jericho Higurashi, and I've been assigned to talk with you. So…whenever you're ready to talk."

However, Shinji did nothing more than finish his latest drawing and put it in his "completed" pile and took out another blank piece of paper and began drawing. For him, there was only drawing…and nothing else was of any concern. He soon heard a shuffling of footsteps, but he paid it no mind.

"Is that a forest with people running in it?" He heard the guy, this Jericho Higurashi, ask, and he lost his focus when the guy touched his drawing with his right index finger.

Jericho saw his expression as one of anger mixed with disgust, and quickly took his finger off the drawing; touching his work was clearly a "no-no".

"Sorry," he apologized. "It's a nice drawing. Have you… Do you have any others?"

Shinji looked down and then placed his crayons down and pointed to the ceiling, where he had used a latter beside the left side of his desk to hand up his work so that he could see them when he woke up every day, instead of seeing an unfamiliar ceiling that disgusted him.

"Wow," Jericho awed, not expecting to see so many drawings taped to the ceiling; there had to have been more than sixty pieces of art. "Do you draw often, Shinji?"

Shinji nodded in the positive, and then returned to his in-progress drawing.

"Do you ever… Are you ever tired of being inside and long to be outside after a while?" Jericho asked him, and he stopped drawing again and picked up another blank paper and picked up a pen.

"_There's nothing out there for me."_ He wrote.

"Really? I mean, there's children your age…"

"_You know why I'm here. I murdered two kids out of eight people." _Shinji wrote further on the page.

"I meant other kids your age," Jericho corrected himself. "And…well, are there any people in your life that never harmed you, Shinji? Do you have people out there that miss you in here?"

"_I have no one. I was abandoned."_

"Who abandoned you?"

"_Father did."_

"I'm sorry. What about your mother?"

"_Her and Father's work killed her."_

"Any friends?"

"_No one."_

Now Jericho knew that reaching out to this boy by diving into his past was impossible, so he had to take a different route in order to understand him.

"I hope you can understand that I'm not trying to irritate you or upset you, Shinji," he told the boy.

Shinji, still not moving his mouth, wrote down _"Then why are you here?"_ and showed it to him.

"I have a whole hour to get to know you today for this whole week. Whatever it is you have to say…or show to me."

Shinji then resumed his drawing and finished up a picture of three tombstones that were as black as the night with a red background.

"Whoa. And whose graves are those, Shinji?" Jericho asked, and Shinji wrote three words for a response that probably had the guy a little freaked out.

"_Mother, Father, Me." _He wrote over the tombstones.

-x-

And after four weeks of being visited by the guy, Shinji never saw him again. Nobody else came to see him, for that matter, as well. He'd been left to his isolation once more, something that didn't bother him since there wasn't a person alive that would say anything of meaning to him. If there wasn't a single word of meaning to be used toward him, it was better to remain silent.

"_Shinji, stop! Please, stop!" _He remembered his aunt begging him to stop stabbing her as she tried to get away. _"Please! Please!"_

But her cries were more like the incoherent babbling of a child that had yet to understand speech in his mind. And it was also in his damaged psyche where the only understandable truths were found. His aunt, uncle and cousin…deserved the fate they were dealt with by him, who had only wanted kindness…but received hatred from those around, just because of his parents. If hatred and contempt were all that he was going to get from people, then that meant the world he resided in was a cruel place to be in…and the ugliness of it needed to be dealt with before the inevitable came and went for him.

Shinji got up and decided it was time to relocate once again; the less time he spent in one place, the less danger he invited onto himself. But in five more days, just five more days, there would be all the time in the world for him to do what he needed to do and less obstacles in his way.

-x-

"…I heard that Rei had to be sedated again," went Misato to Ritsuko, sipping on a cup of fresh coffee the next morning. "Just what happened?"

"She woke up screaming," Ritsuko answered her. "She was babbling something about a little boy and an older boy murdering a bunch of criminals. But something she said confused the other doctors. She said, _"He won't stop, not until he's dead"_. If she said 'he', why say anything about a little boy and an older boy killing first?"

"Wild imagination?"

"Can't you be serious about this?"

"You think I'm not serious? The cops have been getting complaint calls ever since Shinji was identified by the old lady he swiped some food off of. They got parents and guardians wondering when this guy's gonna be apprehended, when he's gonna get locked away for good or just when is he going to get the death sentence. I don't blame them for being afraid of the boy, though. I heard one mother being so fearful for her children's safety that she won't let them leave the house until Shinji's been apprehended."

"You should see some of the technicians that work here. About eight of the men called in and said they needed to take a leave of absence to keep watch over their kids. It's gotten to the point where most of the city's become so unsafe that people will start to leave it."

"It actually doesn't surprise me. Tokyo-3 was designed to repel the Angels. Nobody around here expected to deal with a kid that had a record on his head for murder."

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki left to meet the guy that saw Shinji years back before he was barred from seeing him any further."

"Pray to God he can find a solution to dealing with him, maybe even talking him out of wanting to murder his old man."

As they continued to converse, in his office, Gendo was trying to decide whether or not to do something that might've had dire consequences for either NERV or the city itself. He had recently suffered from another hallucination revolving around his psychotic son that had it out for his head, and it made him all the more fearful for his own life before he could achieve his goal. As much as it disgusted him to look over his grand design to achieve his personal goal that required the unwitting services of his son, it disgusted him more to accept that, no matter what he did, no matter how manipulative he tried to be toward Shinji, the Third Child wouldn't bend for him…and so he needed to be dealt with. That meant calling in people that specialized in handling situations like dangerous people or apprehending them outside the boundaries of the law.

_Bounty hunters,_ he thought, picking up his office phone and dialing a number. _The Third Child might be the worst mistake I ever made._

To be continued…

A/N: What do you think? Gendo decides to treat his son like an animal that needs to be hunted down, Kozo Fuyutsuki finds out that somebody from Shinji's past had some contact with him, and Shinji adding more guns to his arsenal for when he goes after his old man. For the next chapter, I'm considering a chase scene between Shinji and the men that will be after him, with some blood along the way. Read and review, please. Peace!


	4. NEDBNES

Creation began on 08-22-13

Creation ended on 09-19-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Maddening Cause: Not every one dies, but not every one survives

A/N: I don't feel like I'm getting much reviews on this. Or any of my other pieces of fiction, for that matter. Who do you have slaughter on the battlefield of plots and themes to get a review increase?

BUZZ! The doorbell rung, as Kozo Fuyutsuki stood outside the apartment building that this Jericho Higurashi was supposed to be living in.

"Who is it?" A response came.

"Is this the residence of Jericho Higurashi?" He asked through the intercom.

"Yes. Who is this?"

"I'm Kozo Fuyutsuki, and I'd like to ask you a few questions about Patient June Six of Two-Thousand-One assigned to Room II-78J."

There was a silence for a moment. And then the gate that kept Kozo outside the building buzzed and he entered into the hall. He walked up the steps until he stopped at the door that housed the man he came to see. The door opened and revealed a midde-aged man with greyish-brown hair and hazel eyes.

"What's been going on with Shinji Ikari that I was not allowed to know about?" He asked the elder man in the brownish suit.

"That's what I was hoping you could tell me about," Kozo responded to him. "About five days ago, he was being transferred to Tokyo-3…and when he was brought to meet his father, he escaped."

Jericho sat down at his work desk and picked up a small binder with only a handful of papers.

"I only met with Shinji once a week for four weeks," he explained. "He wasn't at all talkative, but, then again, I guess he didn't have to be, because his drawings told me much of how his mind worked. It seemed like he was leaving a personal history of how his life was viewed. He was looked down upon for who his parents were, are and is, shunned by children his own age because their parents didn't want them associated with him, and suffered a good measure of verbal and psychological abuse at the hands of his other relatives where it seemed his only option was the path of murder. Believe me when I say that his mind wasn't all that mysterious to me; if anything, it was a place of pain, loneliness, abandonment and retribution."

"I don't doubt your belief on that. I've seen his drawings. I think it's saddening to see any child suffer the way he has."

"No. It's saddening for anyone with a negative opinion about a child that has done no wrong until they've been pushed over the edge of morality and sanity to commit the acts they did to say such things…and do such things, knowing they can't be all true, and not expect certain outcomes, such as more death and atrocity, to happen later on. I have spoken with dozens of people that either knew of the Ikari family personally or were intimately associated with them, and in all my conversations did I hear the same, universal opinion: Anyone with the name 'Ikari', or anyone related to Gendo or Yui Ikari, is synonymous with 'suffering', 'anger' or even 'shame'. That they're a dangerous bunch, right from the start. I found it unfair to have such beliefs, so much so that I took it up with the board of directors in charge of the asylum where Shinji was being kept."

"Go on."

"I told them everything I had discovered about what had happened, everything that led up to the day Shinji decided to murder his aunt, uncle and cousin, along with those other people that might've just been at the wrong place at the wrong time or had also caused him some trouble that led to the same outcome, and suggested that nobody ever took into consideration that everything he did was the result of being unable to grieve properly for his mother's passing or coping with his father's neglect of him, and instead decided to condemn him for what wasn't entirely his fault. If his father paid more attention to his son's needs and inability to cope with everything that happened when he was little, then maybe he could be helped and had his crimes put behind him."

"Gendo Ikari isn't someone that takes into consideration the needs of others, even when one of them is his own child," Kozo expressed his belief.

"I take it you've met Shinji once before already?" Jericho asked him.

"I have. He wasn't what I had expected of him to be. I actually met him once before when he was a little over three…and ignorant of what was going on around him. Then, his mother had brought him to work the day she died, and that's when everything went bad."

There was another measure of silence between, until Jericho spoke up again.

"The day I was to see Shinji for the fifth time, I was denied access to him," he revealed. "Apparently, somebody or some people that had Shinji locked away weren't all that interested in what a child therapist had to say about how he should be helped. I strongly urged them to reconsider helping him while he was still young enough to be saved before he got past the point of salvation. I believed Shinji wasn't a bad child, that he was a good person deep down, but just did some very bad things because being the victim of words you had no right to say to him pushed him too far. Unfortunately, I got a response from the board…and Shinji's father about a month after I was let go of from the asylum. I had been threatened to never speak of my sessions with Shinji or to try and press the matter any further."

"And…what was your analysis of the situation?" Kozo asked.

"Either the board and that asshole Gendo were bribed or threatened to forget about helping Shinji…or Gendo himself bribed or threatened the board to forget about him. _'If the horse is dead, get off it'_, part of the letter I received said, meaning I should walk away from Shinji's situation. Who could and would, deliberately, allow Shinji to deteriorate into an unstable sociopath and keep him from getting the help he needed back when he still could've been saved?" Jericho revealed, having been plagued by the question that was never answered long ago.

"And you believe…that Shinji is now beyond saving?"

"If he has returned to killing, yes. For him, murder isn't just a way of life; it's the only life he really understands. So he's doomed to keep on murdering anyone that gets in his way, until he either stops personally…or until he's been killed. But I doubt he'll be killed easily."

"Why?"

"Because psychopaths and sociopaths don't think like regular people do. They perform differently that causes either death or destruction that is irrelevant to their perception of the world. Their environmental development factors in how they are able to work in conjunction with their surroundings, use them to their advantage, or just how to kill with whatever's available to them."

"Tell me, do you think it's possible for a person to be able to use a firearm, even after being locked away for a few years, and they've never used one before?"

"Has Shinji taken guns from people when he got loose?"

"Yes."

"Then it's possible to be proficient in the use of a gun, even if you've never used one before. There have been many cases where psychopaths and sociopaths demonstrated an innate ability to use certain tools they've never used before. It's just how they're able to do so that puzzles people. I've chalked it up to developing personality disorders where one personality can be a master of a skill while another can be a master of another skill, even demonstrating a measure of intelligence that was never properly obtained because the person hasn't been in school."

Then, because he felt the guy had a right to know, Kozo uttered, "Did you know that Shinji has a brain about the size of a golf ball in his head?"

"What? How long have you known about this? I was never informed that the medical staff at the asylum examined Shinji when I told them everything."

-x-

"…Please, put down my dog!" A little boy cried toward a tall boy that was accompanied by four other boys, all dressed in black running clothes, and the dog was being strangled.

"Oh, give it a rest," the boy, probably seventeen, told the child, and then the dog stopped whimpering. "Oops. I guess it just died."

He dropped the dead, white puppy to the little boy's feet, just in time to see the child's tears.

BANG! The sound of a gun firing off came, and the puppy killer then fell to the ground, a bloody hole in his head.

"Oh, shit!" One of the other teens gasped.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Four more gunshots came, and the other four teens fell to the ground, holes in their legs.

"Aaahh! Ah, God!" They all groaned.

The little boy looked away from the injured men and saw somebody coming toward them, holding a smoking gun and carrying a large pack on his back. It was a boy, much younger than the five other teens, with a hairdo that seemed to border on spiky and wavy, chopped and slick, and dark eyes that looked empty.

"Hey, man, what's the deal?" A teen on the left of the dead teen asked.

"Oh, shit! It's him! It's Shinji Ikari!" The guy next to him on his left gasped.

Shinji, having saw what had happened, pointed his right index finger to the little boy's dog.

"Hey, we were just playing!" The guy on the right of the dead teen told him. "We were just playing around with the kid! It was nothing personal!"

But Shinji's expression never changed, and he raised the gun to the guy's left leg and pulled the trigger.

"Aaaahh!" The guy screamed as he had a hole in his shin now. "Aaahh! Please, don't! Don't kill me!"

BANG! Shinji fired again, this time at the right leg of the teen on his right. Then, he removed the magazine clipping and put in a new one before pointing the pistol to the head of the guy on the far left once again.

"Aaaahh! Please!" He begged. "Please! It was all his idea (he pointed his uninjured hand to the dead teen)! He wanted to do it!"

Shinji turned his gaze from them to the little boy, who had picked up his dead dog. The boy looked up at him with tears being shed over the loss of his companion, and Shinji gestured with his hand for the boy to go; in his mind, even if the child had, probably, done something to warrant the cruelty inflicted upon him via his dog's murder, he had suffered enough today. With a saddened heart, the child took his dead puppy and walked away.

-x-

"Hey! Police got a hit!" Hyuga told Misato. "A seven-year-old boy came home with a dead puppy after being assaulted by five seventeen-year-olds. One of them shot dead in the head."

"What makes the cops think this might be related to our problem?" Misato questioned.

"According the little boy, his dog was avenged by a boy older than him, younger than the men that assaulted him and killed his dog, and he was using a gun. He was also very quiet. The four seventeen-year-olds left alive can also corroborate the little boy's claim." Hyuga revealed.

-x-

He couldn't get the little boy's hurt expression out of his mind. It was the way he looked after finding out that his dog, his companion, had been killed right in front of him. And those boys that hurt him, all they did was laugh at his pain. There was no forgiving them for their cruelty, and they deserved what he did to him, starting with the boy that murdered the dog.

He looked down at the people below him; the sight of the world from atop a skyscraper wasn't anything like the sight of the world from a mountain peak. The people that were brave enough to venture out in the sunlight wandering around like ants that were scattering about after danger came. It was a funny, albeit twisted thought, that even when he wasn't in his cell at the asylum, he still felt a measure of being confined in a prison. Still a prisoner, but not a servant…and never a slave to a power higher than his own. Men with freedom had the power to affect others, and he had to embrace this power.

"You feel for that boy?" The sociopathic Shinji asked his little self, just in time to notice another building in their mind crumble to dust.

"He did nothing to deserve that harsh reality," the little boy told him. "What could a kid his age do to those fools to deserve the murder of his pet? Did you see that dog? It probably wasn't even a year old yet. What gave them the right to kill it in front of that boy?"

Another building in the background fell from its brittle instability, just in time for the older Shinji to say, "There's no value to any life that exists. It's what we came to accept during our time in the loony bin: Nobody is innocent, not even the innocent, and everyone's guilty, including the guilty. The people lost their innocence long ago…and we're all guilty of something."

"But not that boy. He's only guilty of one thing. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his dog paid the price…along with the guy that killed the dog."

"Still…to kill someone that deserved it… It was a thrill I will cherish to death."

"Likewise, which is why I call you Slayer one time. It's a nickname that fits you."

"And why I gave you the nickname Driving Force. You're my only link to the outside."

Little Shinji smiled and hovered above the older one.

"We should get a move on now," he told him. "After today, we have only four days before we do what we came here to do."

"Father had best be enjoying his final days. He must be fearing what we're capable of."

"Let him. He deserves to know this fear."

In the real world, Shinji had just left off the roof of the building through the door.

-x-

"…Please, I could care very little for Shinji," the mother of the little boy told Misato, as she had just finished identifying the dead seventeen-year-old boy that murdered the dog. "That guy and his four friends, I'd gladly press charges against. They've been giving my kids a hard time for two years, ever since we moved here. First, they harass and follow my eleven-year-old daughter and then throw rocks at my son. Killing his dog in front of him was the last straw. If anything, the Ikari boy did us all a favor by killing one of them and crippling the other four."

Meanwhile, as Misato was trying to get information on the whereabouts of Shinji from the little boy that lost his dog, Ritsuko was trying to get information from the surviving teens that Shinji dealt with.

"…That boy wasn't right," one of them told her. "We told him we were just playing with the little tyke, and he still shot us. He just looked at us and raised his gun, like he still wanted to kill us until none of us were left. Then, the next thing I knew, everything around me got cold. It made me feel weird, like I'd never know happiness again."

"That's how I felt, as well," said another of the teens, staring at his bandaged leg. "It's like that kid has never known a happy day in his life. And what he said…"

"Said?" Ritsuko questioned, confused.

"He didn't actually say anything; his mouth never moved. But I know I heard a voice that had to have come from him. He sounded…like even the gods couldn't save him. Like he was too far gone after being locked away for so long." He clarified what he meant by hearing Shinji speak.

"Too angry to be concerned about anything else," a third teen expressed. "Not crazy. Not crazy enough to be considered crazy."

"…That man killed my dog in front of me," the little boy told Misato. "The guy that was locked away as a boy, he avenged my dog."

Misato wasn't going to get anything out of this family that had been troubled by the teens that harassed them. In their minds, Shinji was no different from a Good Samaritan…just a quiet one that answered situations with first-degree murder.

-x-

"…I can understand your current predicament, Mr. Ikari," went a man with blond hair in a business suit in Gendo's office, "but what you're asking for my people to do…is pricey?"

"I don't want to negotiate," Gendo told the man, "I just want the problem taken care of, and taken care of before the day I just told you about."

"All of this for just one boy? I never met a man afraid of a pathetic child."

"You didn't hear this from me, you understand? And, under regular circumstances, I'd have my own people handle this, but they have never encountered a child that could murder willingly; they're used to older people more than children. You may have to import the talent necessary to deal with this child."

"The name, sir?"

"Shinji Ikari," Gendo answered him, sickened by uttering his son's name.

"I do this, you owe me big…and your son's a goner," the man warned him. "There's no backing out. No turning away. No…recalling of the hunter. They go out there looking for him, they find him alive…and bring him to you as a corpse."

Gendo sighed, sat far back in his chair, and uttered, "He's already a lost cause. The greatest mistake I ever made recently with him…was ordering for his transfer out of the institute."

The man took out his phone and dialed a number, waited for the line to pick up, and then spoke in a different language that Gendo understood as Cantonese.

-x-

Shinji was having a measure of a silent thrill collecting spoils from his victims. With the murder of the guy that killed the puppy, he picked up a pair of spiked knuckles, which would prove useful if he ever got into close-quarters combat again. He could've taken whatever the other four teens had, but their being maimed for life would have to do; they were likely to need years of rehabilitation to use their arms and legs again. Of course, that meant nothing to him; his priority, his main concern, his only objective…was to deal with his father on the tenth and final day…and not let anyone get in his way. That was all he needed to be troubled with. Anything and anyone else were of lesser concerns; if his old man viewed him as some type of pawn, or a commodity, a disposable asset or whatever he chose to view him as, then he had another thing coming.

There was something about wandering the alleys that seemed so old school, but probably most efficient. It wasn't that they were often filthy or desolate, but mostly due to the fact that, nowadays, you didn't see many people around. They were just empty, miserable locales for the human waste that was left to rot and die. What people often abandon, they abandon for good.

He didn't expect to have trouble fleeing from anyone that might've been looking for him through an alley, since nobody seems to bother to check them these days. And they were built smaller, making it harder for cars to traverse them. Soon enough, he stopped and sat his bag down to take a breather; he had enough guns in his arsenal to probably start his own, little war with whoever he wanted to deal with, and he suspected that they weighed a total of at least fifty pounds. It wasn't that much, as any guns bigger than the machine guns and the AR-18 he took off some of the armed criminals that found him would've probably slowed him down. He needed the guns to be mostly light because he'd need to run quick enough to avoid being apprehended, which is why he kept the smaller guns handy…for the close encounters he would experience.

"More buildings fell this morning," little Shinji told his sociopathic side, in their mental solitude, "as if they grow more and more restless with their existence."

"It doesn't mean anything," the filthy teen responded, just in time as another building collapsed. "They fall, just as much as they burn. This city is just a way station of our shared perception. We're the only ones that dwell here. There's no other person that knows of this place…or would dare to intrude."

"Still…it bothers you, doesn't it? Your headaches? My headaches?"

"They will be dealt in due time."

Back in reality, Shinji had found his way into another building and climbed up some stairs, exiting out onto another rooftop where he sat down to gaze at the clouds that assumed various shapes. Just four more days to go until the day came. The longer he waited, the more fear he was sure to install in his father…until he made a mistake or did something stupid, and he would be there to waste him. A bullet to the head, a quick way to go, or maybe an open chest, so Shinji could see his heart fall out.

-x-

"…This kid even drew the inside of his room at that institute," went Misato, looking at some of the other drawings Shinji had made during his time in the institute. "Huh? Say, Rits, isn't this a drawing of your mother before she died?"

Ritsuko, who was also going over the other drawings, looked at the one Misato was holding and found that it was a detailed picture of her mother, Naoko Akagi, who had died less than five years ago. She suspected that Shinji had seen her that day, as well, and she was part of the things he never forgot over the years.

"Yeah, that's her," she told her friend. "Why?"

Misato then held out another picture and said, "I think this drawing's the dark opposite of her, with the blood and gore."

Ritsuko gasped at the sight of her mother in a violent scene: She was being ripped to pieces and burned to a crisp. It seemed Shinji had developed a remarkable fascination toward death and mutilation to draw people before and after a potential cause of death. Except the next drawing she examined made her want to question the accuracy of how well his sense of awareness or even potential precognition abilities were; it was an accurate description of how her mother had committed suicide, laying on the cold, metal floor in front of the MAGI.

"Either this kid's some sort of clairvoyant, emotionless sociopath," she uttered, "or he's just skilled in his art enough to draw out events that there's no way he could know about."

Misato looked at the next drawing she was talking about…and was willing to believe her friend's opinion about Shinji's perception or whatever it was she said about him. If she found another drawing that showed an event that hadn't happened yet, she was more than willing to believe the boy was just beyond their capacity to understand because he'd been locked away for so long.

"Oh, my… You'd better reconsider that opinion after you see this drawing," went Hyuga, who was also looking at some of the drawings. "Look at this perception of madness. It shows up on the Richter Scale with enough force to rattle a city."

The new drawing shown was of a woman, with a pageboy hairstyle, with some remarkable similarities to a younger Shinji, lying on the ground, naked, but covered in bleeding slashes and her neck slit, looking like she had been freshly murdered through stabbing. _"You shouldn't have left me" _was written underneath the scene in black ink.

"Son of a bitch," Misato expressed.

"Jesus, that's twisted," Ritsuko added in, though she had to wonder if Rei would've looked anything like that if it were her being rendered on paper like that.

-x-

With every new drawing shown to him, with every detail of the insanity exhibited by his son in his artwork, Gendo became more desperate in wanting to have Shinji dealt with as soon as humanly possible. Bad enough that he seemed to remember everything in his childhood, but it seemed to get worse with the discovery of the drawing of his mother being murdered in his imagination; Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki suspected that Gendo wasn't the only other member of the Ikari family that Shinji had developed a hatred for. If anything, Shinji was the type that held anger towards those that condemned him…or even left him.

_It seems that Dr. Higurashi was right,_ Fuyutsuki thought, looking at a few of the other drawings that weren't examined yet. _He's been locked away in isolation for far too long, without any type of real help being afforded to him._

The base's eldest member of the organization was looking at a drawing of Shinji in what looked like a city-based setting, but the buildings in the background were so old, they looked like they were ready to collapse, the sky was misty and the ground was as brittle as the ones of rocky deserts. But it was the self-portrait of Shinji that Fuyutsuki found disturbing; the boy seemed hopeless, alone, and almost unchanged since the last time he ever saw him.

_Is he truly beyond anyone's ability to help him?_ He wondered.

-x-

"…Shinji…" A child's voice called out in the darkness. "…Shinji… Shinji, you're in danger."

Shinji awoke from what felt like a slight doze and got up off the ground, looking around himself and seeing nobody present within his view. Still, he didn't feel safe on the roof any longer, so he went inside. But down the hall, he saw three men in police uniforms, doing door-to-door checks…and one of them looked at him.

"Is that him?" The cop asked his fellow officers.

"He fits," said the one closest to the door on Shinji's left.

That was all Shinji needed to hear, and he took out one of his guns he kept in handy. BANG, BANG, BANG! He fired three rounds and dropped the police to the ground with holes in their heads. He then approached their corpses and cleaned them of their arms and ammunition, now taking their Mace, Tasers and batons (even though he had no clue how useful those would be in close-quarters combat, having never used one before, but practice made one perfect).

"Oh, God," he looked up and saw a pregnant teen, probably fifteen years old and maybe five months along, looking down at him from within an apartment.

Instead of using the gun, Shinji instead raised his right index finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture to her. The girl took this as a warning and quickly closed the door; if she heard about why he was locked away, then she knew best to avoid him. Then, without an additional warning, Shinji had fled, leaving three dead cops ransacked of their arms, and bleeding out through their heads. Throughout the whole scene, Shinji's face never changed expression, always emotionless, never wavering in fear or anger, as though some of the time, he could exhibit some measure of emotion, and other times that he was seen by others, his emotions were nowhere to be found.

-x-

"…We got another sighting of the Third Child," went one of the technicians in charge of co-monitoring the city with the police. "A fifteen-year-old called it in after her father came home. A boy matching the Third Child's description murdered three cops doing door-to-door searches, shot them in the head before cleaning them out of their weapons. He shushed her before she closed the door and ran to hide in her closet before she thought he might try to kill her."

"It was reported over an hour ago," went another technician. "If he was there, and seen by authoritarian officials, he's probably in the wind again. This kid's learning to live off the grid."

"Off the grid?" Someone asked, confused.

"Yeah. Being a nomad, basically. A living ghost with almost no trail left behind to track them. Kid's got no phone, no address, no Social Security Number, not even an identification card. Literally, no paper trail. There's no way to track him through the legal channels."

Misato and Ritsuko overheard this explanation, and couldn't deny this fact. The Third Child was deprived of any basic information that the cops needed to track him, so he was a nomad in every sense of the word. There were no witnesses that could lead NERV or the police to him, no clues, a pile of dead bodies belonging to any that got in his way, and no further whereabouts on the kid. If anything, he was a ghost, except he was a ghost that was still alive and had a vendetta he wanted to settle with his old man in due time.

"Why didn't the kid that called it in didn't call sooner?" Misato questioned.

"Fearing for her unborn child," the technician answered.

"What?"

"A girl, pregnant by a boyfriend that died in a hit-and-run two months ago, fearing for her baby's life. Plus, she heard about him growing up, so she's just as afraid of him as her mother was."

"Do you really think Shinji would actually kill a pregnant girl? You know what, I don't really want to know what your response would be."

"I know what my response would be," came Fuyutsuki's voice, as he showed up again in Central Dogma, holding a handful of the Third Child's drawings. "The more I look at his drawings that aren't his past memories, the more I see how warped his view of people is when it comes to morality, innocence, and guilt. Look at these three drawings."

Misato and Ritsuko looked at the drawings and, based on the way they were positioned, suspected Shinji being a lot smarter than they had suspected, despite being deprived on any source of knowledge for years. The drawings were of words that formed some sort of message, and from the way they were set, the message was written as, _"Nobody is innocent, not even the innocent, everyone is guilty, including the guilty, and in a world full of pain, there is only one solution: Retribution"_. It was written in red and black, with a blue and green background.

"What do you suppose he's trying to say by writing that, Sub-Commander?" Ritsuko asked him.

"It's pretty obvious," he told them. "He sees the world as a place full of pain, where everyone's guilty. He probably doesn't see innocence in anyone or anything. And retribution can be synonymous with what he has done since he escaped from the Geo-Front."

"Death," Misato expressed. "Death is often viewed as the ultimate retribution."

"Then, he's dead set on what he's planned to do," went Ritsuko. "He's truly psychotic."

-x-

As one of the Japanese military's VTOL aircraft landed in front of Tokyo-3, the man that Gendo had spoken with earlier was waiting right in front of it. The panel opened up and out came a bunch of men, probably in their late-thirties or early-forties, each dressed in subtle military clothing, with varying degrees of scars located on their exposed wrists, chests, and faces. About twenty in total, with large duffel bags loaded with God-knows-what.

"Everyone," the man greeted them. "So glad that you could come."

"When we heard of the so-called 'generous bounty' that was placed on this kid's life, we couldn't say 'no' the offer," explained one of them to him. "You think our employer would throw in a little extra if we brought him his head?"

Some of the other men just chuckled at his suggestion. Each of these men were skilled for years in what they did…and were even better at working outside the legal channels of the law. Assassination, demolition, retrieval expertise, contract hit men, and brutal brawlers in martial arts that dealt with ending someone's life rather than crippling them. The best and brightest at the bottom of the barrel, willing to do whatever they had to if the price was right, and their assignment was a simple one: Locate Shinji Ikari…and kill him within four days.

"So, he's hiding within the city?" Another man questioned, concerned with the whereabouts of their target. "Off the grid?"

"That's what our employer believes, since he's been given a death threat by our target," the man in the suit told them. "If he wants to kill his father, he wouldn't go very far from the city. Like a lion, this boy will stay close, but as distant as possible, to the zebra until he decides it's time to hunt."

-x-

Rei awoke from another strange dream, her face now free of the bandages that covered one of her eyes, and she found that she was alone in her recovery room. In her dream, she saw the same two boys that she saw in one of her other dreams cause the death of three men that were looking for them, and before that, the boys caused the death of an older teen and the crippling of four others after a dog was murdered in front of another little boy. She also heard the little boy that wore a sad face say something she had never heard anywhere else before, something about everyone not being innocent, only guilty. And at the end, the boy covered in filth changed into a rather-attractive version of himself, with cut hair, clean clothes, and a pair of guns in either hand, raised at her face.

"_If you see Mother, tell her I'm almost at the end of the line,"_ he had told her, just seconds before filling her up with hot metal pieces that left her body a wreck.

She rose up into a sitting position on her bed and looked out the window on her left, viewing the outside of the base and the lake of the Geo-Front. Lately, she seemed to be having frequent dreams of the Third Child, not often what he does in the here and now, but the results of what he has done, but not as he was in the present, but as a pair of boys, one filthy and the other small. And with the last dream up to now, she had to take into consideration that the Third Child, as a person of some interest in Commander Ikari's goal to deal with the Angels when they arrived, was clearly a young man on a mission of his own, uninterested in the plight of mankind, and may have also had his eyes set on doing away with her what she had been told he did to others. Of course, she didn't have the drive of fear like others usually did; if Commander Ikari ordered her to kill herself, she wouldn't even ask him how to.

But that didn't change the subtle feeling she had that this boy would probably kill her if they were to ever meet, face-to-face.

Meanwhile, walking down the hall toward the cages where Unit-01 resided, Gendo was looking at the drawing Shinji had made of Yui. He had to admit that his son had a natural talent for drawing, shown by his accuracy of details and features, but the fact that still irritated him a little was that he still possessed memories of her that were probably undamaged by the passage of psychological time. Yui might've been his mother, but she was still his wife, and that came first before anything else in his mind; Yui belonged to him more than she did to their son. As he entered the cage that held Unit-01, he folded the drawing and placed it into his jacket's left pocket.

"It would seem that he has caused trouble again," he spoke up at the giant, purple behemoth. "The police have yet to find him and he continues to act out like a spoiled brat."

"Who are you calling a spoiled brat?" He turned to his right and couldn't believe that he was seeing Shinji, the way he was years ago when he was left with Yui's relatives. "I don't know the meaning of the world 'spoiled'."

Gendo turned away, believing that this was just his imagination playing games with him.

"You can't shut me out, Father," the little boy said to him. "I'm not even here. Or am I here? Will you ever find me? Can you answer that question? Are you afraid of me? Do you even know?"

"I'm sure he doesn't," Gendo looked up and saw the dirty boy he had encountered Shinji as the day he escaped from NERV, standing in front of him. "Of course, he's never made an attempt to understand us. You cast us out, Father. You cast me out. And that's…just unforgivable."

He then felt something grab his left leg and looked down, seeing the little boy grabbing him, looking up at him with a frown.

"You know, I could bite you and get away with it," the child told his father, "since I'm not really here."

"And I could hit you and no one would really notice. If we want to, we can be seen by many…or just by you. Don't ask us how this is so, but it is so." The dirty boy had added in.

"You left me with people that condemned me," the little boy said, now levitating off Gendo's leg and in front of his face. "You have no idea what it's like to be condemned by people for being related to you. To be cast out, ditched because of the sins of the father, as well as the mother, are reflected upon, unknowingly or unwillingly, by the child. No one was there to help me grieve after Mother left. No one tried to comfort me after you cast me aside. Maybe Mother was the primary part in why I did what I did long ago, sent further down the dark path by your abandonment of me. I had to put up with people saying cold-hearted words about me behind my back, being harmed, physically and emotionally, unable to act out, to say for them to stop it. But in the end, all that was needed…to send me over the edge, to consume whatever sense of a life worth living that had been left to me…was what that woman, what my bitch of an aunt had said about me, that I was so unfortunate to hear."

"She said," the dirty boy uttered, "that if anything were to happen to me. If I got sick and died…she wouldn't miss me…for she didn't give a damn about me. Nobody gives a damn about me. I'm not to be cherished, I'm to be condemned. I'm not to be loved, I'm to be hated, never understanding why. She only took me in because you paid her a fortune. What a load of unnecessary hate. No affection, whatsoever. No offering of acceptance, no offering of friendship or even just one word full of kindness. Money, the one thing that speaks louder than any words ever could, and one of the many things that will not save you from me."

"Not you," went the little boy, "or the girl that resembles Mother in a messed-up way."

"Nobody is innocent, and everyone is guilty."

"You."

"Me."

"Auntie."

"Uncle."

"Mother," both boys said at the same time.

"Ikari," he turned and saw Fuyutsuki, standing in front of him, looking at him like he had gone crazy (of course, that was simple enough to perceive, as Gendo was anything but sane). "What were you doing just now?"

Gendo looked around him and saw that the two boys were gone, leaving him by himself with the purple Evangelion and the elder man.

"Nothing," he lied. "What do you want?"

"There's been another recent sighting of the Third Child again," Fuyutsuki explained his presence. "He was last seen by the police heading down to the industrial districts."

"And I'm to assume that the police are investigating this and sending in a unit to apprehend him?"

"Twenty-seven police officers, heavily armored and armed."

-x-

"I see him!" One of the police shouted, and fired his rifle at Shinji, who was running into a building. "He's in the building!"

As the police chased him inside, Shinji ran up the stairs into the shadows, where he set his bag down and pulled out two of his guns to replace the empty ones he had in his jacket pockets. This was really putting a cramp in his day, and he needed to be at his best for when he went after his father.

"Not quite what was expected," said the child version of Shinji to the older version in their mental domain, "and yet very much anticipated, due to our constant evasion of the law."

"The law comes after us like they did last time, and the first time after they paid the price for what they did to me, those cruel-hearted fiends." The teen responded to his younger self. "But I live for this."

"We live for this. Revenge, closure, and the justice we were denied."

"Nobody will stand between us and Father."

"Nobody will live to stand in the way."

Then, with his gun-toting hands held up, Shinji got off the floor and re-entered the hallway, squeezing the triggers and unleashing a storm of bullets.

"Aaaurgh! Urgh! Aaaurgh!" Several police officers gasped, as they fell to the ground.

"Fall back!" The ones still alive retreated, feeling bullets whizzing around their heads, which seemed to be what Shinji was aiming at, as their torsos were covered in body armor.

But by the time they made it out, only four were left alive. The other twenty-three cops were murdered. Shinji checked one of the dead cops and found a grenade, picked it up and tossed it after pulling the pin out, demolishing the entrance and dismembering a few of the dead police nearest to said entrance. After that, he searched the ones closest to himself and cleaned them out of any ammunition they had, along with the bullets left in their guns to replenish his. He even managed to find four more grenades that he was certain would come in handy later.

"Slayer, you have progressed in your accuracy," the little boy said to his older self.

"The better the accuracy, the less bullets wasted, my Driving Force," the older boy responded, just as their external shell of a body went and relieved one of the dead cops of their bulletproof vest; he didn't come this far on just his wits and willingness to kill, so he took whatever he could get his hands on to achieve his goal. "And now we have some added protection…provided we're not hit in the head."

"Like that will ever stop us."

"We didn't get this far by being reckless, you do know this?"

"More than I care to admit. If they send more cops at us, we'll take more ammo…and probably just reduce their numbers some more until they get that their efforts are futile."

Stuffing the vest into his bag, Shinji armed himself with one of his guns and disappeared into the shadows again. If the cops came back in force and he wasn't out of the building and elsewhere, he'd be in trouble sooner than one could say experienced a massive degree of pain in their heads.

-x-

"…I think it's safe to safe to say that our target's got a problem with authority," said one of the bounty hunters, who had seen the police that had the misfortune of crossing paths with their prey.

They were watching from afar on the streets and made certain not to interfere with police business…until it was no longer police business. What they were doing right now was simple reconnaissance; to fight an enemy, one had to understand, know the enemy. So they had to know the Third Child in whatever way they could before they dealt with him. Then, they would be raking in the wealth that came with the end of his life.

"Don't we all?" Another man asked.

"It looks like he murdered twenty or so of them," one with a scar on the right side of his face told the others. "From what little information we were given, this boy arms himself mostly with guns and ammunition, cleaning out whoever he's fortunate enough to kill."

"It's better to be feared…than to be respected," another man with a pair of sunglasses on his face said. "To know the game of murder is to know only the way of dealing death."

They all agreed on that belief; to know only murder was to know only how to deal in death. And it seemed to them that Shinji Ikari was versed in dealing in death if he was able to kill without any degree of remorse, pity or fear. For them, murder was often their source of income, and it was fun, easy and it gave a thrill that couldn't be forgotten.

-x-

Being permitted to walk around the hospital ward, provided that she be with a guard, Rei Ayanami stretched her legs and worked off the grogginess she had. But what she couldn't work off was the odd feeling of unfair hatred that she felt was directed at her by an unseen person. And a voice, two voices, speaking of hate and justice, but not at what the Angels had done; no, this hatred and desire for justice was directed at what was probably the worst possible excuse for an enemy: People. She had to deduce that it was those two boys she'd seen in her dreams, the little boy and the filthy teen. She would have to inform Commander Ikari, eventually, but she had no idea how he would react to details of what she saw and heard in her dreams revolving around a boy that seemed to carry a great weight of sadness wherever he went, accompanied by a dirty teen that seemed to have a great deal of anger toward the world, or what he'd do about it.

"Huh?" Her escort went, and she looked up ahead of the hallway, seeing a little boy that looked just like the one from her dreams. "Hey, what are you doing here, boy?"

The child paid the large man no mind and continued to bounce something that didn't look like no ball; it wasn't shaped right, and it appeared wet with something. As the escort approached the boy, he backed away right after he (and Rei herself) saw what he was playing with. It was a woman's head, looking freshly severed from its body, still dripping blood, with the expression on it that of fright. The boy, without a sad expression, looked up at the man and held the head in front of him.

"This is my aunt's head," he said, sounding hollowed out, as though he had no sense of empathy for anyone, whatsoever. "You wanna hold her?"

"Aaaaurgh!" The guard screamed, and pulled out his pistol at the kid. "Drop the head and get on the floor! Right now!"

"Or what? You're going to shoot me?" He challenged. "You wouldn't be the first person to point a gun at me. Go ahead and shoot me. Put a bullet to my head. Who knows, you might just enjoy it, killing a kid that had every right to kill his auntie and her family, along with anyone that got in the way. You'd be just another example to me on how the world is a miserable place…because of the things people do to each other. I think you've killed before. Did you kill kids? Maybe a defenseless toddler that did you no wrong? We all have blood on our hands. Catch!"

The little boy then threw the severed head to the guard, who dropped the gun to catch it. Suddenly, Rei saw the boy vanish, along with the severed head. He didn't just disappear in a puff of smoke; he just blanked out of sight, like he wasn't there to begin with. There wasn't even anything to support that the boy was even there to begin with. Except the guard escorting Rei and Rei herself, but who would believe them?

-x-

Shinji's head hurt. He wouldn't deny that, but he channeled that pain in his head into energy, just to keep it at bay. It was all he could do since he'd been denied any sort of aid, but lately, ever since before he was removed from the loony bin, this pain increased drastically, as if signifying that something extreme was going to happen to him. But whatever it was had to wait until he was done with what he came to Tokyo-3 to do. The years in isolation had also left Shinji something of an atheist; he didn't believe in there being life after death for anyone that Death came after, nor did he believe in any deity being merciful or forgiving of any sins committed in the past, as he, for damn sure, didn't forgive his parents for their sins of abandonment, neglect and attempted exploitation, just as he couldn't forgive his aunt for saying the words that drove him to commit murder.

"Doesn't it seem strange that every time we suffer from a headache, our domain grows smaller?" The filthy teen asked his younger self.

"I guess it's a sign," the little boy responded.

"Of what?"

"That more people are going to die if they get in the way, maybe."

"Oh…like we should even care."

"We don't."

Shinji could've chuckled in real life if he had any will to do so, but nothing he did, whether it were a physical action or just a thought, sparked the power of laughter in any form. For him, laughter was one of many things he just couldn't do any longer. Nothing was funny, anymore. There was no joy, no passion, no ecstasy in anything said, thought or performed. Everything was just a series of shapeless forms, invisible vapors, inaudible feelings that, if acted upon, resulted only in the blood of those that acted upon them. And as he wandered the streets of the city, unseen by the ordinary folk, he edged closer and closer to that something that was a sign of something greater to come…and he hoped that it was the sight of his father in front of him, on his knees, begging for mercy.

-x-

"…If this kid were making a living off the misery of others as a freelance or contract killer," said Misato, having been informed of the deaths of the cops that went after Shinji, "I'd wish he work for NERV."

"I hope you're just pulling chains, Misato," went Ritsuko, accessing the MAGI to try and find the Third Child through the satellites hovering over Japan. "With the hatred of the people escalating the longer he's out there, they're gonna demand that he get the death penalty instead of locking him away again. The police are most likely to agree with the safety of the people over the interests of NERV and put a bullet through his head the moment they find him again."

"He killed over twenty police officers in less than twenty minutes. That's over the other body counts he had in the other days he committed a murder. He's not only becoming very proficient in what he does, he's escalating."

"That's only because they came after him. If he wanted to kill more people, he would've done so by now. He's probably off somewhere by himself where nobody can become a threat to him."

"This doesn't change the police having a vendetta against him now. The men he killed had families, children, wives that demand his head be served on a silver platter. The cops want payback for murdered cops. Things are getting ugly."

"No, things were already ugly. It's a war out there."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. And NERV thought they would just have to deal with the Angels. But no. We have to concern ourselves with a sociopathic child that spent most of his life in the nuthouse, drawing his memories down on paper, has no social skills, a golf ball-sized brain, is dead set on killing his father for personal reasons, and, beyond that, he's a kid we simply don't understand fully."

"It'd be a nightmare if he turned out like this, even if he wasn't in the institute."

On the desk behind the two women were the other drawings Shinji had made; they had looked at a large handful of them…and still had many more to go through, as it seemed to get more complex each time a new drawing was examined, whether it was one of beauty or of gore. Some of them even seemed to suggest, in a grotesque way, a sense of precognition not fully understood, as though Shinji knew what could happen before it even happened, whether he was involved or not.

-x-

"…You were able to locate the boy?" The guy in the suit asked one of his comrades, up on the rooftop of another skyscraper.

"Yeah," answered one of the other three men that went looking for Shinji Ikari. "He's been shacked up in that building three blocks away from this one. Either he's resting…or he's plotting his next move."

The building Shinji was last seen hiding in was another skyscraper that was under renovation, and the people charged with working on it hadn't been on the job since word got out that a killer child was loose upon the streets, making it a suitable place to hide for a while.

"And the others?" The suit asked about the other bounty hunters.

"They're about to enter the building in pairs," the third guy answered him.

True to the words spoken, at least twelve of the other bounty hunters, in front of the empty building, were entering the construct in pairs of two, five minutes at a time. That way, they had the advantage of not being ambushed by the boy…if he was smart enough to do such, which was debatable.

"What you gonna do with your share of the bounty after we take this kid out?" One guy from the second pair asked his partner as they traveled up the building's stairs.

"I don't have it yet," he answered him. "You?"

"Same as always. Invest in my future after I retire from the business."

As they continued going up the steps, and as the third pair entered the building, a small drop in the temperature within the halls occurred, along with a sense of lost hope or something.

"Yikes," the first guy from the fourth pair shuddered as he entered the hallway of the building's seventeenth floor. "You feel that?"

"Yeah," his partner responded. "I don't feel very cheerful."

-x-

Since he didn't have any paper or crayons or color pencils to draw, Shinji was unable to indulge on his creativity or manifest his recent experiences to reflect upon visually. Instead, all he could now was rest up and try to cope with the remains of his headache that he channeled into energy for later use. Lately, it seemed like time grew shorter for him in a single day than it did in a week, with him losing some measure of consciousness for at least a few moments to a few hours, during which he conversed between his two minds within the city that slowly wasted away.

"You don't look so good, my Driving Force," the Slayer personality of Shinji spoke to his child self, seeing him laying on the ground.

"And you look filthier than usual here," the little boy responded, seeing his older self looking more unkempt, with his clothes worn during the time they resided with the insane asylum looking dirtier and ripped in the sleeves on his wrists and knees. "I think I'll just rest up here for a while. You keep an eye on things out there."

"Hmm. It won't be long now."

"Even a short while is still too long. The fate of vengeance…is also the joy of nonexistence after a life of misery."

"And somewhere, it was believed…that the fate of destruction was also the joy of rebirth."

"That's nothing more than a falsehood. There is no joy in living again after being dealt with in a previous life. Just as there no joy left in anything else after much suffering is experienced."

The older boy lowered to his knees and touched the little boy's right wrist, feeling that his skin was colder than usual. Then, he checked his own wrist, and it was colder, too.

"Looks like things are going to get extreme for the duration of the day."

Opening his eyes up to the world around, Shinji got up off the floor and picked up his bag of weapons, arming himself with a gun, once he checked to make sure the safety was off. He slowly opened the door of the room he was resting in, but soon saw some men that were down the hall from him. He saw one of them raise a gun and fire at him.

BURST! The bullet whizzed past his ear and got lodged in the wall behind him, and he got back inside the room and closed the door.

"Found him!" He heard them shouting outside, and a gathering of footsteps.

"Biggest bounty we ever scored. Ikari's gonna be thankful we took out his kid."

This made Shinji's two sides very furious, although the emotion never showed on his face. If his father hired men to kill him…and then pay them off for doing so, it was another reason to want to do him in on the anniversary of his mother's death. It would make perfect sense for him to treat the matter that was his father's future lightly for the time being…and to treat everything else, the small concerns, seriously, just as one's decision should be made within the space of seven breaths, like those of the ancient past. If he was to get out this new predicament with these men after him for riches promised by his father, then he would have to advance and dash in headlong, even if escape would be difficult to obtain by doing so. This was just another small concern that needed to be dealt with seriously.

"On three, we bust in," he heard one of the men outside the room say to the rest, and knew he needed to be ready to dash in. "One… Two… Three!"

Before the bounty hunters could break the door down, said door was riddled with bullet holes and the two guys in front of it were riddled with the bullets. Shinji had fired one of his machine guns and then broke the door down and ran down the hall, bag and all, armed with said gun! The other men that came for him gave chase and opened fire upon him, but missed each shot at his head or his limbs.

"You can't hide from us, Ikari!" One of them shouted at him.

Shinji made small attempts to turn around and shoot at them as he ran up the stairs and straight down a hall towards an open window. He saw a rope dangling outside it and leapt toward it, grabbing it and swinging to the right side of the building, just in time to send one of the men right behind him to his death, as he jumped at Shinji, but missed.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhh!" The guy screamed, falling right toward the streets, reduced to a mangled splat in front of everybody there to see.

With three of them dead, Shinji intended to take out as many of the remaining men as possible as he escaped them. Running across the wall whilst hanging onto the rope, he ran past the other four men he saw and kicked on his head.

"Oophf!" The guy grunted, falling backwards.

"Son of a bitch!" One of the other three shouted.

Shinji climbed up the rope until he reached the roof, just in time to see more men running out to get him. He used his machine gun and fired at them, forcing them to run back into the building. Then, he ran toward a large, wooden plank and ran across it, right onto the roof of another building. He shot open the door and entered into a hallway with a staircase going down.

"Get him!" The bounty hunters all grunted. "Shoot his pretty head off!"

On the stairs in the building next door, Shinji ran down the steps like there was no tomorrow for him, while at the same time looking back to make sure that his chasers were a good distance behind him. And throughout the short run down the steps, his face never changed from the emotionless expression he had on. Even when he had been shot at, his ability to show fear or even excitement was, practically, nonexistent, like his nerves and muscles beneath his facial exterior were simply incapable of most emotions more than half the time.

Whiz! A bullet missed his left ear and hit a wall as he made a turn to the next staircase, looking up and seeing the men behind him. He opened fire on them and emptied his machine gun's current magazine.

"Aaaahh!" Some of the men he shot gave their last screams as they either fell backwards or forwards on the steps.

"Shoot him!" One of them screamed. "Shoot him!"

Bullets whizzed past Shinji's unflinching form, missing him as they lodged into the wall behind him. It was like these bounty hunters had no accuracy against him whilst he was firing at them. But when the gun fired its last bullet, Shinji had to flee and take out another one before they got him.

"Son of a bitch!" He heard the ones left alive yelling in anger.

No longer running down the stairs, he was running through a hall, plain in its design as it was gray and empty, all save for a giant of a man that showed up, sporting snake tattoos on his arms. Shinji hadn't expected there to be any other people after him than the ones he shot on the stairs.

"You're about to go to Hell, Ikari," the man told him, and pointed his gun at the boy; an awful moment, as Shinji didn't have any of his out to protect himself.

BANG! The guy shot him in the right leg, but found himself stunned by what he saw. While the bullet hit Shinji below his kneecap, all Shinji did was take a look at his now-injured leg, like it was just an embarrassment rather than a hindrance. He didn't even do what other teens his age would've done after being shot, which was to scream in pain.

"Oh, God," the man gasped, and then Shinji took out one his Beretta he took off one of the NERV workers he had killed when escaping, and shot him in his leg. "Aaaahh!"

Three more bullets were fired into both his arms and other leg, and he fell to the floor.

"What the Hell are you?!" He demanded to know of the boy, and Shinji approached him, walking unhindered by his injured leg.

The guy's vision blurred a bit as Shinji came closer to him, and saw a sad, little boy replacing the good-looking teen, accompanied by a filthy teen with messy hair covering his face. He tried widening his eyes to focus his vision, but all he got for his efforts were the boy he shot in the leg in the background of the dirty teen and little boy. It was as though the good-looking boy wasn't there to be observed by anyone, and the ones he was permitted to look at…were these two. By the time they came face-to-face with him, the man found that the world around him had changed to resemble a desolate city, with buildings falling down.

"Out there, we don't speak," the little boy told him, his voice full of anger.

"But in here," added the dirty teen, "in this crumbling realm, where life is oh-so short-lived…everything that is said…is unheard by others. In here, your final words don't mean a thing."

"Ah…aaaaaaahhh!" The man screamed, and had his head blown off by Shinji in the real world.

As the headless corpse fell back, Shinji relieved it of the gun used on him.

-x-

Nearly all the men that went after were murdered by him. A total of seventeen, leaving three of them alive, including the man in the suit that called them, having avoided the conflict. All they had to show some result of their encounter with Shinji Ikari was that he'd been shot in the leg, but for all they knew of what happened, the boy wasn't hindered in the least by a bullet in the leg. For all they even knew, Shinji Ikari wasn't as human as he probably used to be.

"…That son of a bitch whacked my best friends," one of the remaining bounty hunters said, sounding devastated by the deaths of his comrades, as they were in a small building just outside of Tokyo-3, getting medical aid for their minor injuries that needed to be dealt with. "The Hell with his old man, I want to ice this kid myself."

"Same here," the smallest member of the remaining three added in. "Nearly took my arm off with that gun…and shot two of my closest friends right in front of me."

"I'm calling in backup," said the gentleman in the suit, taking out his cell phone. "A lot of backup. It's not about the money, anymore. Now, it's personal. That boy made us look bad."

"He made all twenty of us, some of the most dangerous men in the bounty hunting business, look like a bunch of second-rate security guards at a strip mall," went the last giant of a man, getting his left leg bandaged after having a bullet removed from his hip. "And judging from his complete lack of vocalization when running or being harmed, he must have a high pain threshold that's extremely overdeveloped to a point where not even a bullet affects him, physically or mentally."

"How about that? A kid that can't react to pain like others would. If he showed a sense of loyalty or an ability to be bargained with, he'd make an invaluable contract killer. A pity. A real pity." The gentleman expressed, dialing a few numbers. "It's a good thing the people are fearful of the boy and would rather have him dead than locked away again. Fear is good for business."

-x-

Gendo was becoming fearful of the shadows of his office now. After being informed by his contact in the suit, about how Shinji was able to murder most of his best bounty hunters, he started to worry that nothing and nobody, short of an army or even one of Japan's two Evangelions, would stop his son before he had the chance to kill him and be done with him. There was now only three days left…and the third day itself would be over at midnight tonight. His son's fatalities were almost seventy dead and that number could climb ever so higher, and the worst part of it all at the moment was that NERV's personnel had reduced by several more workers in the last forty-eight hours, all fearing for their lives because the kid that was killing left and right, was his son.

"_But he might require medical aid," _he remembered a member of the board in charge of the institute informing him, prior to Shinji being transferred into their custody after he murdered for the first time.

"_Irrelevant," _he remembered telling them. _"Your concern is just to keep locked away for a while. He doesn't need anything else."_

"_But if he does get sick…"_

"_It won't matter. All you need to do is play zookeeper. Keep your monkey house locked up until I call for the monkey I left in your care."_

"_Is it really appropriate to call your son a monkey?"_

Gendo had paid the concerns of Shinji possibly needing medical aid no mind; in his mind, some time away from everybody in complete isolation would mold his son into what he needed of him to be. What other choice did he have back then but to lock him away in a loony bin and make sure he stayed in isolation? After the murders of Yui's sister and her family, along with the other five victims that were involved, there wasn't a single soul in all of the nation that wanted anything to do with the son of Gendo and Yui Ikari on any level, whatsoever. Of course, he knew what choice he did have back then…but wouldn't take that choice because of an unfair, untrue point of view he had. So, he buried himself in his work, making it so there would be no time to even consider thinking about Shinji.

"Gendo…" A soft, female voice uttered in the darkness as he continued looking over old newspaper clippings that had spoken about Shinji. "Gendo…"

He took his eyes off the clippings and looked up in front of himself, seeing the last person he expected to hallucinate on: Yui Ikari herself! She appeared as she had been the day before the Contact Experiment, dressed in a white lab coat, a pink blouse and a green skirt. Her face a color-corrected, older version of Rei Ayanami, with an angular jaw structure.

"Gendo," she uttered again, "if anything should happen to me during the experiment, please, look after Shinji for me."

Then she was gone again, as if she came back just to remind him of a promise he had broken. A promise he had broken on purpose due to only caring about her, never once caring about his son. And now, because of the promise being broken, the little boy they had possessed a vendetta against him…and was willing to murder a number of those that got in his way on the path to murdering him. He remembered Shinji being such a carefree child that had no understanding of violence, hatred or the capacity to do the unforgivable that changed a person from an innocent…into a psychotic.

"You shouldn't have left me," he turned around and saw his son, not as the little boy he abandoned or the filthy teen he met before he escaped, but the clean, semi-attractive stranger that seemed able to kill dozens of people that crossed him and remain handsome in a twisted sense of perception. "Time grows shorter, life measures from years to months…to a few days, and everything becomes moot, even what we try to achieve, eventually. No sacrifice, no victory. No motivation, no resulting outcome. No drive…no impact."

Gendo perceived this hallucination as everything he would never view his son as in real life; someone educated, had a way with words, seemed to understand the concepts and qualities of hope, determination, motivation, faith and acceptance, and was capable of doing whatever he invested himself in doing. Unfortunately, the hallucination was armed with a handgun in his right hand…and the safety was off.

"We both know that you know that I'm not really here," Shinji told him. "I'm merely an illusion, a fabrication belonging to your mind, made in the image of how you've seen the real Shinji, who's still out there in the city, doing God-knows-what. His fatalities are in the double digits. Maybe he'll seek a total of one-hundred victims that deserve what he's waiting to unleash upon you."

"You don't scare me, you impetuous brat," Gendo told the fabrication.

"Oh, I'm impetuous? I'm impetuous? Maybe I am. I know I didn't need to be to murder your wife's sister and her family, just like I didn't need to be when I killed everyone else that crossed me. I don't scare you? Auntie was scared of me. She begged me in her screaming breaths to stop stabbing her the night I killed her. But was I scared of what I did? No, I wasn't. And you know why? I was too enraged to care about being scared."

Gendo sat there, quiet, pondering the depths of his very sanity. Even though this was just his perception of how his son acted towards him right now, but it was enough to convince him, albeit subconsciously, that every choice he made for his son resulted in dark consequences. Lives had been taken, altered or simply crushed.

"You're very pathetic, chasing after your wife," Shinji told him, taking the clipping out of his gun and checking the bullets. "You don't actually expect to get away with what you've done, do you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he countered.

"Don't forget that I'm not really here, but I know all that you're trying to do. Why you're doing this all. This is just you using me as a type of cracked mirror of judgment against you, you looking for someone younger and less inhibited to judge you for your crimes and sins. You won't win this…and you will suffer on the day she died, along with any dumb enough to stand between you and I. Because, and I won't stutter, not everyone dies…but not everyone survives." Shinji then placed the clipping back into the gun and chambered a round. "So, even if you don't get killed by me in the future yet to be written, because I don't believe in destiny being set in stone, I guarantee that you will not survive the retribution that will come for you in due time."

He aimed the gun at his father's head and pulled the trigger.

FLASH! GASP! Gendo awoke from a light nap he didn't recall taking on his desk, looking around his office and seeing not a soul. Everything that had happened just a few minutes ago was just a nightmare that revolved around his perception of Shinji…along with his developing paranoia of being killed by him on the anniversary of Yui's death.

"Not everyone dies, but not everyone survives," he muttered the words his hallucination of Shinji had used on him. "Anyone that survives an encounter with Death…will, eventually, die later on. Anyone that lives…will, sooner or later, die."

-x-

The night symbolized the end of the previous day and the coming of the next day. Now, two days were left until closure, justice and the end of this nightmare could come to pass. The sounds of the city noises masked Shinji's presence as he sat by the edge of a creek leading away from a water purification/filtration facility, washing the dried blood off his leg and bandaging the exposed flesh, now that he found the time to take care of after adding an additional pharmacist from a nearby drugstore that was about to call the cops the second he saw him helping himself to some bandages and disinfect. It was also the time he found himself able to think of the last time he had an encounter with an adult with a medical license.

It was two days after he was arrested for the murder of aunt, uncle, cousin and the other five souls that crossed him, and he'd been quiet since that night he stepped out of the house with his aunt's blood on his clothes. The doctor had tried, for lack of a better word, to evaluate Shinji, but when he made an attempt to stick a needle in his left arm, the little boy became violent and bit him on his nose. Three cops had to remove him and hold him down while another doctor sedated him. It had been decided that Shinji wasn't socially adept with being around people, anymore, and his lack of vocalization was only the start of his inability to deal with people in his life. But Shinji could care less about their beliefs and opinions of him; he had enough on his mind with dealing with personal concerns that needed to be dealt with, and his mother's side of the family had been first on the list, with his father being the only one left. He was the only reason he came back to Tokyo-3: To finish what he started back when he was less than six years old.

"I'm looking forward to the day when this can all end," the Driving Force persona of Shinji said, appearing out of thin air in front of himself, who paid him no mind as he continued to tie the bandage around his leg.

Seconds later, the Slayer persona of Shinji appeared and stood in the creek, the water flowing past his exposed toes.

"It's like we're on a tight schedule, constantly," the filthy teen told the little boy. "So much to do, so many lives to peel away from the path we've taken…and so little time to do it all."

"Even when it seems that we lack time, we really have all the time we need. That day we wait for is really all we need."

After that was spoken, the boy had finished fixing the bandage on his leg and stood up on it. It felt uneasy at first, but the quiet teen inhaled through his nose and took a step away from the creek. There was no pain, only instability, which soon corrected itself as he took the next step. His two personas had disappeared from perception and he went over to his bag of guns, taking out the one he took from the guy that shot his leg, loading a bullet in the chamber and setting it in his coat's left pocket before setting his bag on his back. The sounds of the city's night life was probably the only time the artificial pit of soullessness seemed to spark with life…but it also made the place even more pathetic…and he would have to wander through it just to keep himself busy…until he found an empty, abandoned dwelling to crash for the rest of the night.

The city lights reflected in his eyes, now completely cleared of their bloodshot-redness, as he had more time to rest when he wasn't on the move, were a partial sign that there was something missing in him. He had much to do, but so little time to do it. Even so, his child personality stayed true to the belief that even the least amount of time was more than enough to achieve his goals, which he, a man in his own right, had to continue proving for himself. For himself, not for anyone else.

To be continued…

A/N: There you have it. Another chapter completed. I'd probably be lying to myself if I didn't say it, but I believe the idea of arming Shinji with guns came from the new _Sleepy Hollow_ television series with the Headless Horseman/Death being armed with modern weaponry. It was tight! Well, read and review. Shinji will be something to behold in his endgame in due time. Peace!


	5. Escalation of the Damned

Creation began on 09-20-13

Creation ended on 10-15-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A Maddening Cause: Escalation of the Damned

A/N: I seem to be getting several followers of this story, but I don't get as many reviews like I did on _The Spirit stays and the Princess disobeys_ story for _Avater: The Last Airbender_. I'd like to get more reviews and opinions of this story. I mean, I'm making Shinji get more and more out of hand, even when he doesn't voice his feelings in real life to people. Here goes the new chapter.

"…I always knew something was wrong about that little boy," Fuyutsuki listened to the young woman on the video recording on his computer, among dozens of videos made in the aftermath of Shinji's arrest after he murdered his mother's sister and her family, along with the other five victims. "Everybody claimed he was different from other kids. Nobody wanted anything to do with the son of Gendo and Yui Ikari, even if you put a gun to their head."

He clicked off the video and switched to a new one.

"The more I heard about the boy, the more I kept my kids at bay from the playgrounds and that house the boy was shacked up in," a man said in the video. "One of the things I heard that might've been a rumor made up by others was that Shinji was being abused by his aunt and uncle, and that he may have some scars on his back. But nobody proved that to be nothing more than a rumor because nobody wanted to deal with the kid. Let me tell you, whenever I was outside, I kept my distance from the Ikari house and the Ikaris."

"And the rumor of him being abused, physically and verbally?" Another man asked him, recording the video of the speaker.

"Nobody has come forward to say anything about it."

"And your personal opinion on Shinji?"

"The same as everyone else's: He's dangerous and unwanted."

Fuyutsuki clicked off the video and switched to a new one.

"…He was tried as an adult for his crimes…"

"…I used to think he was just a sweet, little boy until he murdered those people…"

"…Not even my wife would want anything to do with him…"

"…If it was me, I'd end his life myself, sparing everyone the disgrace of his presence…"

"…He attacked a doctor once before his trial…"

"…Shinji was completely unresponsive during the trial. It was like he wasn't there. The lights were on…but nobody was home to answer the door. He was just, I don't know, catatonic. You could yell at him, and he wouldn't respond…"

For the next two hours, Kozo Fuyutsuki reviewed each video that spoke of people's opinions, however twisted and demeaning, foul-hearted and loathing, of Shinji Ikari. He seemed to be getting nowhere with the videos, just as he got nowhere with the thirty-seven phone calls he made to several people that were smart enough to leave their numbers on their videos posted on the Internet. It seemed like everyone that had a bad opinion about Shinji weren't going to change their views on the possibility that he might've actually been a misunderstood child back when he was abandoned by his father. How could a bunch of people that never even knew the boy personally develop such harsh beliefs about him?

"…If Shinji Ikari really killed those people he lived with, then maybe what he did was justifiable," he heard one of the women that posted their video on the Internet. "I actually knew his aunt, and Motoko wasn't at all interested in dealing with her nephew. She claimed the only reason she took him in was because her sister's husband paid her to. She even had the nerve to express her true feelings about Shinji: She didn't love him or want him around at all, and would've been grateful to anyone that got the idea of killing him or he got sick and died. I'm guessing that Shinji found out and became devastated by the harsh truth that his relatives wouldn't concern themselves with him, and, because I heard that he'd been the subject of intense abuse, both verbal and physical, did what he did out of temporary insanity. Or…perhaps Motoko tried to see how long it could take to drive Shinji mad…and he did, only it took a greater hold on him than he expected. I was at the trial, and I saw his face. He was empty, probably cut off from the world around him after what he did, and lost. I wasn't the only one that viewed him being tried as an adult as unfair. There were at least six others that thought the boy needed help, not hard time in a mental institute, but we were too stupid to not speak up. If anybody deserves to be locked away, it's that Gendo Ikari, who abandoned his child."

For once, Fuyutsuki found a woman that didn't think negatively of Shinji, but viewed him as a victim.

_If his aunt took him in only because Gendo paid her to,_ he thought, _I guess she and Yui weren't the best of friends or had a sisterly love._

"…That's messed up," he turned around and saw Captain Katsuragi, who probably overheard everything on the video.

"Captain Katsuragi," he spoke up, "just how much did you…"

"All of it," she cut him off and answered. "All of it. So tell me (she walked to the left side of the control console he was at and leaned on it)…did his father really pay his aunt just to look after him?"

"What makes you think I know anything?" He tried to dodge the question.

"You're the second-in-command after Commander Ikari. You answer directly to him, and I've never seen or heard of him having any sort of meaningful relationship with his son before he was arrested. Just last night on my way home, I overheard a couple saying that the boy's aunt and uncle were paid a fortune just to watch him, but really wanted nothing to do with him. In the end, how heartless can you be than to admit that you never cared about someone so young and helpless, only for them do something so awful that it left them locked away for years to come?"

Kozo sighed and was at a loss for words to defend Gendo, which wasn't something he wanted to do, anymore now that he had some more clarity on Shinji's past and some of the reason he did what he did years ago. To protect Gendo from some measure of persecution…was no different from protecting a tyrant or war load…and they didn't deserve such protection from anybody by anybody.

"You…sympathize for Shinji?" He asked her.

"If it were me," she responded, "I'd probably do the same thing he's doing. I'd want my old man to pay for his actions, to beg for mercy…and then pull the damn trigger."

-x-

There weren't many cops out on the streets, probably spread thin looking for him. But Shinji relied on that possibility; the less police there were to see, the easier it was for him to wander about. They weren't going to stop looking for him, however, and he knew that; killing cops earned you the hate of an entire force of law and order, which would demand retribution for the lives taken. He was hoping that there wouldn't be much of a need to go after the law and settle their beef with unless it was absolutely necessary; he would bring a world of hurt if they came after him.

"…Be careful on your way to the store, sweetie," he heard a man's voice from around the corner, as he hid in an alley. "You go to the store and then come straight back."

"But Shinji Ikari might not even be in this part of the neighborhood, Daddy," responded a girl's voice.

"He killed over thirty people yesterday. He can be anywhere. Just be careful. You see him, you run for cover and call the cops."

"Yes, sir." Shinji then heard a scuffling of footsteps as a girl, probably no older than he had been a year ago, dressed in what had to be a school uniform, walk by. "I don't see why anybody would go through this trouble for one kid that people view as a major threat. I wouldn't mess with him."

Shinji would've probably smiled if he could, but it wasn't worth trying to, so he walked away from the street and into the shadows.

-x-

"…I'd pin this guy's death on Ikari's kid without a doubt," said a detective for the Tokyo-3 Police Department, which was now facing a reduction in their personnel due to the deaths that occurred yesterday, from both the force and several bounty hunters, checking the corpse of a pharmacist. "Any idea why he'd wanna kill a pharmacist?"

"My guess is the guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," said another cop, checking the shelves that had some items knocked off. "The kid must've been here stealing medical aid for himself, and the guy found him. Put simply, an unnecessary murder."

"Nothing further on the information we got from NERV, which was spotty at best. If just bits of information on the kid was all they ever had on him, then Gendo Ikari clearly doesn't know his son," went another cop."

"I think it's time I paid him a visit," said the detective, and he left the crime scene.

-x-

"…Hey, Ritsuko," went Misato, late in the afternoon; her conversation with Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki so heavy on her mind that she wanted to forget it, but hearing from an elderly man that a father paid his son's aunt and uncle to look after the boy wasn't so simple to put behind you. "What are you looking at?"

"Old medical files," the faux-blond answered, looking at an old fire that she was able to get from the last hospital Shinji was at prior to incarceration.

"I thought you-know-who hadn't been to a doctor in years," Misato told her.

"They're from way before he was arrested," she explained, looking over a copy of the sociopath's birth certificate. "Huh?!"

"What?"

"This can't be right. Someone else's birth certificate got in here along with his."

"Who's the mystery stowaway?"

"Someone named Mako Ikari."

Misato went over to the faux-blond and examined the file with her, and stumbled upon an old photograph. There were two babies present, wrapped in blue blankets. She then took a look at the birth certificate that didn't seem to belong and found that Mako was born on the Sixth of June in Two-Thousand-One, the same day as…

"Tell me, Rits, do you think Shinji's an only child?"

"With you asking, I'm not willing to question your potential insanity. It could be just a coincidence."

"You wanna disbelieve it…or do you want to talk with the hospital this file came from?"

"Why waste our time going there? We can get whatever information we want through the MAGI." Ritsuko then typed in a few command codes and got a response faster than it took Misato to drink a case of beer. "Oh, my… According to the medical file found, it says that…"

"Shinji had a twin brother named Mako," Misato cut her off her, reading the screen, "and he died a week later, right after he was born. Cause of death?"

"It's listed as 'blunt trauma to the back of head'."

"Someone killed him?"

"Gendo dropped him by accident."

"What?!"

-x-

By the time it was seven-fifteen in the morning hours, Tokyo-3 received several more visitors. A large group of at least fifty men, of various races and looking like they were, despite their ages, scarred by conflict and dealt with their issues through similar forms conflict. They all checked into a large hotel located in Tokyo-3's eastern side and met up with the same gentleman in the suit that Gendo hired to eliminate Shinji.

"So nice of you to come here on such short notice," he greeted each of them, having rented the dining room for the evening to inform these bounty hunters, hit men, gunrunners and hired thugs. "As most of you are aware, we've encountered a major problem."

"Yeah, this damned boy, Shinji Ikari," said a large man of African-American descent, bearing a crescent scar on his left facial cheek. "I just want to know one thing: How do we get him?"

Several of the other men all uttered the same question.

"How many of you can fit into a police uniform?" The gentleman asked them. "Some of us have to find him through the justice system until he turns up. I'll need at least seventeen of you to do this."

-x-

"…I was never informed that Shinji had a twin brother that died," Fuyutsuki confessed to Misato in the cafeteria.

"I don't think many people ever knew," she went on, explaining the new information she found out through Ritsuko and the MAGI. "It's possible that even Shinji himself doesn't know this fact. As far as he's concerned, he's an only child…with a vendetta."

"Are you sure he killed him? I mean, information can be fabricated."

"It was written on paper and on the medical history records. If he didn't have a twin, why lie about it?"

"Hold on a minute. If this is all true, how could Ikari get off easily after the accidental murder?"

"It was probably written off as an accident, though I wouldn't suspect it was part of the reason he gave his kid away."

As they continued to converse, Gendo himself had visited Rei in the medical ward, as the First Child had received another unusual dream revolving around the Third Child.

"…He murdered a man that worked at a drugstore," she explained the details of her latest dream to him. "He…and the little boy that seems to always be by his side…expressed some measure of reaction to a goal they have being within their reach."

Gendo could only deduce that it meant that Shinji was somewhat pleased that his patience would pay off in two more days' time before he came for him and killed him. It would've been easy for him to avoid his son's wrath, after seeing the extent of it taken out on those that came after him, by leaving for a while, but it'd be no different from running from a bully. Plus, he wasn't scheduled to be away on any business trips until after the Third Angel was dealt with by Unit-01, and that was not for a month's time. Still, he could've made the claim that his escape was a business trip, just for the sake of appearances, but he couldn't, wouldn't, take the chance that his son would be waiting for him to leave the base.

"Tell me, Rei, did you see me in any of your dreams?" He questioned the albino girl.

"Yes," she answered back. "You were in one. You were with the little boy and his dirty, older companion, in a large chamber…and there was the being tied to the cross that is down in Terminal Dogma…along with Unit-01. The little boy's saddened expression changed to that of rage…and he held up a gun at you. He fired…and then you died."

"Did he say anything before he killed me?"

"He said, _'I've lived with a great pain that has siphoned me of what I have left. I've seen only the shadows of the world…and its people. They look down on me, like I'm some sort of outlaw…or worse, an outcast, like I'm diseased, pitiable, or just unwanted. They never once gave me a kind word. They never once treated me like they treat themselves or others. All my life, day after oh-so painful day, I lived as one of the few and many condemned by those that think they have the right to judge me because they have all they want. But I doubt any of them would understand the hatred they fed me after locking me away in that cold, dark room where hope was absent and nowhere to be found, unwilling to be found. But that was okay. I learned to stop looking for hope. I learned to stop seeking out the acceptance of others. I learned to cast aside my heart, just as Father cast me aside. There were no more smiles, not even an attempt at one, no more laughter, no more tears, and no more of wanting of what I would never be given. And then he wanted to see me, after I spent more than half my life in the dark, to get me to bend over for him to put a chain around my neck. He sent one of his lackeys, a baroness with purple tentacles for hair and a blood-burning torso, to bring me to him in his underground kingdom, to see the lord of disorder atop his throne of lost dreams. He wanted me to ride a giant dragon in purple armor against a legion of world-ending servants of a higher authority that would sooner send me away like everyone else did. I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to try and reach out for Father's acceptance. I just wanted to reach in him and pull his heart out, to show him how little he understands…and how much I think of him now on the day Mother left me first, and then toss it away as he falls down, choking on his blood. This life I've lived since getting away from his kingdom and its dragon, it wasn't what I expected it to be, yet it was able to let me do something no one else would let me do: It let me see that we're all condemned to fates made by us, one way or another. And my fate was decided long before I even drew my first breath.' _That is what he said."

Other than what Shinji said in her dream being a long spat, along with probably how damaged his psyche truly is, Gendo had to consider that the time his son spent in the nuthouse had not only deteriorated his mind…but strengthened it, molded it differently than any other poor soul locked away for a long time. There was no longer any doubt that Shinji Ikari lived for only one thing, to kill his father and be done with him. This made Gendo more uneasy about everything else he had come to accept about his son's behavior…or rather, his lack of a way to actually even criticize his behavior. He had believed that there were those that were born bad, bad seeds, but not Shinji; his hatred, his sociopathic state, even his ability to murder without remorse…were all learned from the harsh environment that was the world around him.

"…He is coming back to NERV to kill you," he heard Rei question him, "isn't he?"

He didn't answer her. He just sat there in front of her, removed his glasses and pondered how to give her an answer best suited for the question.

-x-

The police activity seemed to be in some sort of rotation for Shinji as he wandered around the streets. Every so often within the two hours he walked, he saw a police car going up or down the street, probably trying to find him. They wouldn't have much luck on that, as there were several hundreds of people out and about, masking his presence; either the men and women outside in the midst of potential danger knew he was out in plain sight or they were too concerned with their professional lives to be afraid of who they dubbed a deranged killer child long ago. He took advantage of some of the ignorance they exhibited, as his face wasn't plastered all around the news for long; any that didn't know what he looked like were out of luck if they tried to mess with him.

"…I didn't mean to lose it," he stopped within an alley he had just entered and saw a little boy, probably eight or nine years old, dressed in sailor uniform, speaking to an older man with a beard that reminded Shinji of his old man.

Then, he saw the man hit the boy in his face, knocking him down. Something in him just snapped in half, and the next thing he knew, he was in front of the man, who felt the temperature of his current environment drop, as if whatever happy feelings he had were abandoning him. He grabbed the man by his wrists and threw him against a pile of garbage.

"Hey, what the Hell's your problem?!" The man asked him, obviously having no idea that this teen could take his life right now.

Shinji then raised his left arm up and brought out one of the tonfa batons he took off the cops from within the sleeve of his coat. WHACK! He struck the guy in his face, either breaking his nose or knocking out a tooth or more.

"Aaaaurgh!" The man groaned, and staggered away, but Shinji wasn't having any of that right now, and whacked him on his back, hard enough to hear the sound of bones breaking. "Aaaaurgh!"

He then kicked on his left side to turn him over; he wanted the man to see him before he sent him to the next world. He put his tonfa away and brought out one of his pistols, chambered a round, and aimed it at his head.

"Any last words before you go, old man?" The guy looked at a trashcan and saw the Driving Force manifestation of Shinji sitting atop its lid, his face a saddened expression.

"No!" The little boy that had been knocked away gasped, running past Shinji toward the man. "Don't! He's my father!"

Shinji looked at him, along with his little boy persona watching them. Then, just for good measure, he pulled the gun away from the guy's head…and fired at his right leg, destroying his knee cap.

"Aaaurgh! Oh!" He groaned, and Shinji's Driving Force persona disappeared as he walked away, leaving the boy to look after his father.

This way, the man would learn, regardless of how long he had left to live, not to be abusive toward his son, no matter what he might've done that was wrong or accidental.

"…Shinji…" A voice called out; it was the same voice that he heard that time he was on the roof of the building when he killed the three cops that came looking for him. "…Shinji…they are coming for you. You must run."

Shinji stopped walking, stood in the middle of Tokyo-3's pathetic imitation of the original city's Shibuya's well-known street for scramble crossing. Everyone walked around or past him as he stood there, his eyes glazed over. After a minute or so, he was the only person left in the street that hadn't crossed, leaving several cars that he was blocking from going anywhere.

Honk, honk! The red one in front of him revved and flared, the driver getting agitated.

"Hey, you!" He shouted at Shinji. "Hurry up and move your ass! I gotta be somewhere!"

But Shinji didn't move. He was as still as a statue.

"Mommy, why is that boy just standing there in the street?" A little girl asked her mother, pointing at Shinji's still form.

"Hey, isn't that the kid that NERV brought here?" A man questioned. "That psychotic boy that was locked away after murdering his aunt and uncle and cousin?"

The red car's driver continued to honk his horn at Shinji, not caring who he was, but just wanting him to move out of the way before he got the idea to run him over. Everyone else on the sidewalks were pointing and gossiping at Shinji, who continued to stand there in the street.

-x-

"…Are you sure?" Misato asked the guy that called NERV HQ five minutes. "Thank you (she then hung up the phone and looked to Ritsuko, who sat nearby). We got a hit. Shinji's just standing in the middle of the New-Shibuya crosswalk."

"He's just standing in the middle of the street?" Ritsuko questioned. "What could be going on in his head that he would do that?"

"Whatever it is, it's enough to get live recording right now," went Hyuga, who showed them what he meant by bringing up what he just discovered.

"Whoa," Misato gasped.

"No one's sure why, but the missing killer child, Shinji Ikari, has shown up and is now just standing in the middle of the street," a woman holding a microphone told viewers in front of her camera.

"…It's either a cry for attention or a potential suicide attempt," went a man in front of another, "but whatever the reason, Shinji Ikari's as still as stone in the street… Oh, my…what is that boy doing in the street approaching the killer?"

The cameras pointed to a little boy that just appeared in the street, walking toward Shinji. There were cops present, trying to keep the people under control, just as a few of them started to approach the little boy that approached Shinji's still form.

"Hey, when did that guy show up?!" Somebody from the crowd shouted, and one of the cameras pointed at a…

"No way," went Ritsuko, as the new person in front of the camera looked exactly like Shinji had when she met him for the first time, and he was walking toward the still boy.

"That's not possible," added Misato.

The dirty, disgusting boy that looked like he spent an uncertain number of years in an old institution and was mistreated constantly looked at the camera holder, despite his filthy, unkempt hair covering his face and hiding his eyes, and raised both his hands up and gave everyone watching an inappropriate sight that was looked down upon.

"That kid…just flipped everyone off," said Aoba, who sounded surprised and disappointed.

"And now, the little boy is doing it, too," said Ritsuko, as the little boy in the street imitated the older boy, flipping off the cops. "They, apparently, lack people skills."

"More like Shinji lacks people skills," went Misato, who could've swore the little boy looked just like Shinji did with his new digs, only younger and when he was incapable of murder, before his aunt hurt him with the harshest of words you could ever, unintentionally, tell a child.

And suddenly, people started screaming at the sounds of gunfire.

"Oh, shit!" Someone gasped. "He's shooting at us! Shoot back!"

One of the cameras, both out of focus and off balance, turned and zoomed in on the boy that was no longer standing still in the middle of the street, and focused to show Shinji, now using a sub-machine gun in his left hand and one of the handguns that he either took from the cops or the NERV personnel that he killed in his right hand, shooting at people, most likely the police present.

"The Hell with this!" The camera holder, a woman, shouted, dropping the camera. "I'm gone!"

The monitors showing the live feed all went static after that, leaving the NERV personnel wondering if the police there would be able to stop Shinji's reign of terror. If "terror" was even the correct way to describe the impact he had on people.

-x-

With the people running away and some of the police shot dead or incapacitated, Shinji, while his two personalities were still manifested for the people to see, walked over to the driver's side of the red Prius PHV and shot the driver that tried to hassle him in his left arm.

"Aaaahh!" The guy screamed in agony, and saw Shinji opening the door.

Shinji, putting his handgun aside, pulled the adult out of the car and threw him to the ground before replacing the driver with himself. He shut the door, set his bag of guns and ammunition aside, and put the pedal to the metal. Looking out the driver's damaged window, he shot at several more cops before they could shoot at him as he drove off down the clear road; whether they were dead or crippled was not on his mind, as he would soon ditch the wheels, since they would track the car down soon. But for the time being, he could get away faster with a car, which had him considering an idea that just popped into his mind.

-x-

"…They believe you've withheld information on the boy and are demanding the truth, Ikari," Fuyutsuki informed Gendo, who sat at his desk, his hands crossed in front of his face, which now looked like he had a reason to understand fear, and pondered the current situation. "He's escalating, you know, Ikari. He's already murdered almost half of the police force, several others in the crowd were shot at and left bleeding, and one little boy's father will probably never walk again. With every passing hour, that day comes closer, and when that day comes…he's coming back here…and he's coming for you, and nobody will be likely able to stop him."

But Gendo didn't respond to the elder's warning. He had gotten through with a meeting with SEELE to have the Second Child transferred to Japan sooner than originally planned, as the Third Child had proven to be beyond NERV's capacity to control or contain, despite the assistance from the local authorities. Worst of it all, he had a recent vision, thanks to reviewing many of the old drawings his son had created during his incarceration, and in his vision…his son murdered Rei Ayanami, simply because of her appearance, bearing an albino resemblance to Yui, then shot Ritsuko Akagi to keep her from keeping him away from himself, left Captain Katsuragi for dead after shooting her before she could shoot him dead, and even made an attempt to murder Yui herself, who, for some reason, came back and tried to reason with him, ending with Shinji finding him and putting him down for good. He couldn't deny it any longer than he had been since the day Shinji had been brought here and escaped; Gendo was feeling the fear that came with his son's death threat message. He would've done anything he could, even dealing with the Devil himself if it meant being protected from his son, but he doubt that even the lord of Hell could protect him from the very being he had helped in reaping after sowing.

"There's nothing withheld from them," he told Fuyutsuki.

"That's not what they believe," Fuyutsuki countered. "Most of them wanted to kill him, but they have orders to detain him, and they can't even do that. If anything, Shinji might decide to go after the cops and kill them to keep them from protecting you. Ikari, you have to come clean and reveal the truth about what really happened…"

"Nothing happened."

"We both know that isn't true. As much time as I spent looking at his drawings, I find Shinji's view of the world to be justifiable from his point of view. When you exclude the killing he's committed, he's just a boy angry at the world…but angrier towards his family than anyone else. Can you imagine what he'd do if he killed anyone really important? I can't forget the drawing he had of killing Yui; he must have started hating her at some point in the past to draw her as a corpse."

"That's enough, Fuyutsuki," Gendo spoke up, not wanting to hear any opinions about whether or not Shinji hated his mother enough to imagine killing her; Yui was always a touchy subject with him, even though the drawing of her would-be corpse was right on his desk.

"We should just own up to it. Shinji's present state was our fault. We made him this way by leaving him with people that you paid to watch him, and they made him want to kill them in turn for mistreating him. Then, he got locked away for years in that institute and had no contact with anyone on the outside. He's never once had anybody say a kind word to him, to tell him something that could've put a smile on his face, or just your everyday phrases or what have you that make people laugh or smile. Whether you admit it or not, we're at fault, Ikari. _'We create our own demons'_, a famous man once said, and it's true."

"That man has been dead for a long time, Fuyutsuki."

"But his words don't waver. Shinji is undeniable proof that we're awful for what we do, what we've done and will do later. I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to come after me before he comes after you, and I can only hope that he'll be at least be merciful."

"And why would he come after you? You've done nothing to him to warrant a death sentence."

"Guilt by association, Ikari," Fuyutsuki expressed, and then turned to leave out the office. "When you're in league with the Devil, you're not as innocent as you once believed you were. I'm as guilty as you are, trying to exploit a child that was viewed as an outcast. Just tell them the truth, otherwise I will tell them myself."

-x-

Once he ditched the Prius and got about one-thousand feet from where he abandoned the car, Shinji found an abandoned garage in an empty building and did inventory of his guns and ammunition. He was running low on bullets due to that previous encounter with the people looking for him, so he would have to replenish his stock, among other things. This revelation, of course, meant that he would have to do something serious in due time, and that was to find those that had plenty of bullets to spare. But he wasn't sure if there were any other criminals within the city that he was likely to come across, either by accident or on purpose, which left…

Not even as his sighing was audible enough to be heard, he packed up his inventory, placed one clipping into his coat's right pocket, replaced his blue cap on his head and went on the move once again, heading into the shadows. With his ammo running low, he would have to strike the ones with the authority to carry arms around the streets, but would have to wait until the night came back to life.

-x-

"…Kami, this city's better off a ghost town," went Hyuga to Misato, as they were walking down the crime scene that was New-Shibuya. "I saw Ibuki earlier this morning, too. She's leaving the city and heading for New Nagasaki, claimed she had a nightmare in which Shinji brought this city to its knees before he killed his father."

"There were over a dozen of the families here that are packing up to leave," Misato expressed. "And I hear that to evacuate the whole city…could take a week or two if there were more people afraid of the boy and his vendetta against his father."

"Suppose he succeeds in his vendetta," Hyuga suggested. "Say he does it, say he kills his father the day after tomorrow, then what? I mean, what's he going to do after he kills Commander Ikari? Will he stop? Will he just surrender himself to the cops once he's done? I mean, some people never give up a vendetta; it's almost impossible to give up, even after everybody on your hit list is crossed out."

"Who knows? Shinji's not a social person. His list of victims, including the petty criminals he killed, has risen to almost eighty casualties. If he stopped and the authorities got him, they'd just give him the death sentence. I actually feel sorry for Shinji. What must it feel like for him, to have the world hate you and not even know you?"

"It's only a matter of time before he shows up at NERV HQ to carry out his revenge. I know I won't be there when he shows up."

"You're resigning?"

"My parents called me, and they heard about Ikari's son being loose in the city. They want me to come home, and they're not requesting that I do; they're demanding because they don't want me me to get killed by him."

"You're lucky you still have people worrying about you."

"But whatever happened to the heart and soul of a kid that never had a childhood worth remembering? What became of that poor soul that never got to grow up?"

"You pity Ikari's kid?"

"I pity what people have done to him over the years. I pity what he's become as a direct result of it all."

"Yeah…I'd feel sorry for him, too…if I actually got to know him."

"…My husband was one of the casualties of the incident that happened today," they both heard a woman say to another woman down the sidewalk they were on, and she was trying to calm her frightened daughter. "I told him that we should just leave the city when we found out that boy was being brought here. What kind of crazy people set free a kid that murdered people on his mother's side of the family when he was four or five years old, was a subject of abuse and locked away for a long time in isolation, and then do nothing but let him kill more people that want nothing to do with him?"

"I've never supported NERV or its interests in helping people," the other woman responded, who then picked up her son that was half-asleep and half-worried about further tragedy happening. "How am I supposed to explain to my husband that his little sister was trampled by the people as they were running away from the kid that was shooting at us? If there were more proof that he'd been abandoned by his father and his aunt and uncle saw fit to abuse and neglect him, then I'd be a little more sympathetic for him, but look at what he's done to others. He's a lunatic, he's dangerous and won't hesitate to harm anyone that claims to want to help him."

"I heard once that a cop struck him on his back after he was sent to the loony bin. He's supposed to have some bruises or scarring. One of my friends, who's a gossiper, claimed that one of his cousins was in the institute with the boy and says he once snuck into his room…and was almost killed by the boy."

"There was a rumor that his mad scientist father paid the people running the institute to keep him confined from the world, even to deny the child necessary medication that people need. I heard that Shinji was even fed very little while there, and when they did feed him, it was only dried rice and scraps, like he were some dog or something."

Misato and Hyuga turned to face one another and weren't sure whether or not to believe these two women on what happened to Shinji before they ever met him, or to consider questioning Commander Ikari on his part in what didn't come close to an upbringing for Shinji. They were survivors of the Second Impact and knew of the Hell that came after, but with a boy that was still just a baby growing up in a subtle (or not so subtle) version of the Hell they had to endure, it was comparable. It might've even been part of the reasons Shinji hated his father and why he stole food days ago after he got a new look after escaping from NERV.

"Hyuga," went Misato, "I think you should go to your folks' home right now."

"What about you?" He questioned.

"I can regret not leaving when I'm dead."

-x-

"…We were out there for four hours," went one of the bounty hunters disguised as a policeman in a room with several other policemen, all of whom were bounty hunters. "We didn't see him."

"It's almost closing hours and the start of the graveyard shift," said another disguised bounty hunter. "We regroup, we rest up and then we go out and find the prick and give him Hell."

The other five disguised bounty hunters agreed to that, fortunate enough that the precinct they were at wasn't only the sole one in the whole city, but was furbished with an armory with every kind of gun you could dream of and enough bullets to start your own war. So if they found Shinji, they'd be taking enough heat to put him down for good.

-x-

"…I don't like that Shinji Ikari bit me on my nose when I tried to administer a vitamin shot," said a male doctor on another video Fuyutsuki was looking at through the MAGI. "I mean, I've had children hit me in my legs on lesser occasions for other reasons, but he was a quiet boy with a lot of anger that wouldn't seem to leave him. He nearly bit it off completely. I still get the phantom pain of his teeth piercing my flesh. Whatever happened to him, I would recommend that he get immediate counseling from a therapist before reintroducing him to society."

The elder then switched to another video with a female nurse that had been with the doctor that day he nearly lost his nose.

"…He looked emotionless," she said, "like he had no sense of self, or an identity. But there was something in his eyes. He had the eyes of a person that the world wouldn't hesitate to throw to the wolves if it meant living a little longer, and the world did throw him to the wolves to save themselves."

"…Nobody could really prove what was going on in that institution he was sent to, mainly because the police didn't want anything to do with the Ikari boy," he had switched to another posted video, this one with another woman speaking about Shinji, "but there have been small rumors about the people running the place abusing the people admitted for treatment. A treatment facility? Try a waste treatment facility, because I've been hearing that the women admitted over there were being abused sexually by the guards. But with anyone below the age of consent, and I mean anyone below the age of consent, are often the ones suffering assaults late at night. There was a kid admitted by his grandparents a year before Shinji had been taken that claimed the female guards beat him for no reason, and he never did anything to them. It's likely that Shinji's experienced the same thing, regardless of how long he's been in solitary confinement."

Fuyutsuki then searched the Internet for posted videos detailing the time people spent within the institute around the same time that Shinji had.

"…My kid sister claims that she saw the Ikari boy being assaulted one time," a man said in one video. "Unlike herself, he resisted and fought back, and actually broke a lady's leg. Another guard struck him on the back of his head, but Shinji didn't scream, according to my sister. The lady had to swing her club hard, but no sound came out of his mouth. She assumed he had to be a mute, and the air around him was cold, as though he had no understanding of any happiness in life."

"…My grandfather, who was getting treatment for his schizophrenia, claimed that he saw Shinji Ikari one time being dragged back to his room in solitary confinement, beaten half to death, with his face bruised up and bleeding. Apparently, the boy had almost been the victim of a sexual assault by two of the male guards, and managed to cut them so much that they considered him a lost cause. People should be complaining about how that institution works, but whenever they hear about Shinji, they choose not to get involved, like he did worse than murder. No matter how much hatred the people have for him, Shinji Ikari's a victim, too." A woman posted on her video, and then Fuyutsuki clicked onto another video.

"As much as the people hate Shinji for killing eight people, three of whom were from his dead mother's side of the family, I doubt the boy cares for their lack of concern for him," another man expressed. "He's probably consumed not by any grief from killing people, but by the madness that drove him to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if, one day in the future, he, by some act of providence, got out of the institution, and went looking for his father just to murder him. It would help to justify the rumor I heard from some friends that Gendo paid the people in charge to mistreat his son, as if he were less than a person and more of an animal. People can go crazy from years of abuse, neglect or abandonment. Hell, I should know. My first girlfriend tried to kill me once, and all I really ever did was arrive ten minutes later for our last date. She'd been the subject of abuse at the hands of her father, whom she killed."

After that, Fuyutsuki had seen and heard enough for the day, and turned the console off. Even though the videos were just from different points of views, he couldn't help but feel cautious and concerned that Shinji might've been harmed during his time at the institution, especially when he was supposed to be kept away from others as a security precaution, not to keep him safe, but to keep others safe from him if he ever made an attempt to kill, even in self-defense.

_As much as I prefer the days of the past before Second Impact, no matter how stained they were with sins,_ he thought, leaving the base, _this future is not cleansed of any sins, only further stained with hatred, violence and heartache. And it seems, unlike those that were fortunate enough to get out of the institution, Shinji had taken the brunt of all the things wrong with people. So much so, that he's beyond anyone's reach, just like Dr. Higurashi said he'd be if he didn't get the help he needed back when he was a little boy. What in God's name have we done to this child, just to change the world?_

-x-

Tokyo-3's streets were quiet once more, with almost no people out and about, except for those of the law and those too stupid to realize that danger is loose, ready to bring death and retribution. But the only place that was of interest tonight…was the city's police station, and that was what Shinji was looking at with the intention of getting enough ammo for the day everything would end.

"Driving Force," the Slayer persona of Shinji uttered, appearing beside the emotionless boy that looked down at the police station from across the street. "Is there no other way to do this?"

"You know the answer to that question, Slayer," the manifestation of the little boy Shinji had been once responded to his older, dirtier self, appearing on the ledge of the rooftop they were on. "Do you not find it the least bit odd that we're starting to show up in this plane of existence when we should be in the sanctity and solitude of our decimated and abandoned landscape?"

"No, Driving Force. With each passing day, every passing hour, even right now, life flows slower…as light fades away from the day. But…it's only when the ends grows nearer…does one show all that they can show to those that they go after. This…would be like a penultimate scenario."

"Penultimate…the next-to-last of whatever happens."

As the two personalities conversed, the physical body of Shinji Ikari stood up and left, though they never felt fear of where it was going; they could see through the body's eyes, and everything seen was relayed to them, like a camcorder or monitor.

"You ever wonder what could've happened if I never existed?" Slayer asked Driving Force.

"I prefer not to," he answered back. "I needed you then, and I still need you in my life, no matter what. We're bound to this fate. Only an ocean of justifiable retribution will bridge the division between right and wrong, light and darkness, and all that other stuff we shouldn't have an understanding of, but do."

"It's a bitch that people don't choose for themselves to stand aside and just let us do what we have to in order to end the madness that engulfed us long ago."

They then vanished as the real Shinji moved through the fire escape and down into the alley where he found a blue Camaro Concept. He raised his left hand and, due to the added protection and force of the spiked knuckles, smashed the window of the driver's side. Taking out a tofa, he busted the key slot and managed to start the engine without the alarm starting. Now, all he had to do to drive toward his destination and bring Hell with him to the police for their ammo.

-x-

Fuyutsuki, true to his word that if Gendo didn't reveal to the police what they did to make Shinji the emotionless killer that he was, he himself would tell the cops all that he knew. It was a long hour of confession, knowing that NERV would be looked down even further by secrets.

"…And when he escaped, that was when the majority of the personnel realized the entirety of his vendetta against his father," he went on. "His bloody message on the wall, his picking up weapons from whoever he's fortunate enough to take them from after he kills them, and everything we were able to figure out from his drawings."

"Yeah, we were told that he drew a lot of pictures during his time at the institution," one of the three cops responded, a woman that expressed fear and concern about Shinji, and looked at some of the drawings present on the table. "So he's been plotting to kill his father for some time, but is waiting on the anniversary of his mother's death to do it? Can you imagine it? The will it takes to do nothing but draw pictures every day for years? The will it takes to shut out the world completely, waiting for a chance to have a way out made for you? And to finally get free, to change your appearance after years of living in your own filth, to wash away the dirt of your past and adapt to your present in a new environment, and just wait for the right moment to perform what you're longing to do? This boy's not just damaged from what people did to him in his past, he's unpredictable, somewhat intelligent, and, worst of all, patient."

"Well, thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Fuyutsuki," the second cop, a man, told the elderly man. "We'll be back later once we find and apprehend the boy."

"It'd probably be better to just avoid him," Fuyutsuki tried to persuade them. "He's not going to be stopped from going after his father. I'm inclined to believe that once he's achieved that goal, he'll stop. Anyone that decides to stand in his way, he'll not spare them from his wrath."

"I wish we could, but he still killed a lot of cops, and the ones left want payback. A bullet through the head or lethal injection. Maybe even the chair." A third cop expressed, being another woman of the law.

"Calling all cops! Calling all cops!" Their walkies all went off. "Mayday, mayday! Shinji Ikari has attacked headquarters! Request backup! Aaaaahh!"

The sounds of gunfire roared in the background.

"Oh, no," Fuyutsuki gasped, realizing that the penultimate of the worst had finally happened.

"Son of a bitch is at the precinct," the three cops realized, and then left.

-x-

None of them saw it coming. A man in the lobby of the precinct had just waved one of his fellow officers goodbye as he continued to sign forms. Then, he just saw a bright light and looked up, with no time left to get away.

"Aaaahh!" He screamed at what was approaching.

A Camaro Concept, a dark shade of blue, smashing through the glass and steel, right into the wooden front of his box and destroying everything it could, including the man in front of it. The damage was enough to alert the rest of the police inside the building. The passenger door opened…and out came Shinji, armed with two sub-machine guns while carrying his bag of guns. His mission was clear: Replenish his ammunition and kill those that refused to stand aside.

"Freeze!" He saw a lady cop come out from around a corner, and he opened fire. "Aaaaahh!"

She was dead on the floor, followed by a guy that showed up further down the hall, preparing to shoot at him, but he shot him first.

"Aaaahh!" The cop screamed, falling dead on the floor.

Shinji then entered the room the lady cop came out of and shot dead seven more cops.

Bang! He felt an impact on his back and turned around, just in time to shoot at another lady cop, putting a cap where her right eye used to be; his bullet-proof vest was a good item to take off the cops he killed days before.

"Drop 'em, Ikari!" Shinji, without even turning around, used the gun in his left hand and killed the cop in front of him, reducing his head to Swiss cheese.

Going further down the hall, he saw his younger personality, the Driving Force, who simply raised his left arm up and pointed to the right, which would've been the left if he were facing the other way, leading Shinji to a closed door with a sign that read "Power", all caps. He opened the door and saw a series of buttons and switches with cables. With no time to ponder which ones did what for the building, he grabbed a power cable leading into the floor and jammed it into the fuse box, causing a series of sparks and electrical surges to come out of said box.

Pop-crash! The lights above his head blew out and shattered onto the floor.

"Shit! He's taken out the power!" A man yelled, and Shinji resumed his advance toward what he knew would be the armory. "Everyone to the armory! We need to take this kid out!"

Shinji stopped, took out a grenade and tossed it down the hall after pulling the pin.

BOOM! It exploded and sent whoever was unfortunate enough to be near it to either the floor or to the next world.

"Aaaaaurgh!" The screams of several men and women came.

"The Hell with this shit!" A woman's voice cried out. "I'm gone! I don't wanna die!"

The woman came out from around the right corner and stopped in front of Shinji. She suddenly felt a coldness emanating from the boy, as though her sense of happiness had fled her heart.

"Hey, lady," she looked down at the little boy that was also Shinji. "Ante up the gun, the ammunition, and run your ass off if you don't want to die."

Deciding not to question her sanity, she threw the boy her gun and her three ammo clippings, said they were his now, and ran past him to freedom. This allowed Shinji to replace the ammo he was wasting in order to replenish it with more ammo. Then, just for good measure, he took out a lighter, a bottle with a rag jammed into it, and lit the bottom of said rag, throwing it into an office, starting a fire. And as he continued to walk down the hall, his dirty personality appeared and watched as the real boy he changed into went on to take down the rest of the law that stood between him and the closure he sought.

"Blood and bone, fire and brimstone," Slayer expressed. "Burn it all down as you lay down the path of vengeance and advance toward its end."

-x-

"Ah, shit!" Fuyutsuki, who, along with Misato, decided to tag alone with the three cops that showed up at NERV, heard one of the lady cops express, as the front of the precinct had a large hole in it due to a Camaro having been driven into it.

"You two stay out here!" The male cop told them as they rushed in.

"You can't stop him!" Fuyutsuki tried to reason; the boy wouldn't be cheated of what he had desired to do. "It doesn't matter what you try. He'll just kill you if you try to stop him."

"It comes with the job," the other lady cop responded, and they ran inside, amidst the screaming and gunfire noises.

-x-

Entering another room that wasn't the armory, Shinji brought pain and death to another bunch of officers that were dead set on killing him to atone for the deaths of their fellow cops.

"Rrraaaaaaurgh! Take this, you piece of shit!" A man shouted from behind a desk, and shot at Shinji in his chest, not knowing the vest had protected him from injury. "Aaaaurgh!"

BANG! Shinji, still standing, blew the guy away with the last rounds from the magazine clipping from the sub-machine gun in his right hand. Then, he took the cartridge out and turned it over, revealing that before he showed up, he had both clippings taped to another pair, saving him some time to replace his ammo and continue on.

Unknown to him, just outside the building, a woman with purple hair and a red jacket and an elderly man stood in front of the precinct, both mesmerized and frightened by the screams of men and women that put their lives on the line to protect the people, getting killed by one boy that had nothing and nobody to get him to stop.

"I got you!" A lady cop shouted, jumping from out a room and shot him in his waist. "Die!"

But Shinji still wouldn't fall, and shot back, putting several bullets in her heart and head, and watched her fall to the ground. As he pressed on, both his personas appeared over the fallen police and watched the continuance of murder and retribution.

"Those that refuse to save themselves instead of trying to stop us," went Driving Force.

"You're all going to die," finished Slayer, and then they vanished again.

Shinji then stopped, seeing some big guys in police uniforms, not so different from the big guys that came after him before. He wasn't going to take any chances that these men were no different from the ones he had dealt with before, and shot at them.

BANG! One he missed, wielding a shotgun, fired at him and sent him flying backwards onto the ground, almost tearing a hole in his bullet-proof vest.

"I got him!" The guy shouted.

Unfortunately, he failed to be thorough. Shinji, once he recovered from the shotgun impact, decided that he wanted the weapon for himself, and got rose back to his feet, taking out the gun he kept in his pocket (which the bounty hunter in disguise could identify as a Glock 17 pistol) and unleashed two bullets, one for the left eye and another for the forehead.

"Aaaurgh!" The guy screamed and then fell down, dead.

Shinji approached his corpse and relieved him of his shotgun, a rather-impressive Mossberg 500 shotgun, liking the feel of its steel, though his expression remained neutral. He pumped the next round into the chamber and went hunting for more cops that were foolish enough to get in his way.

"Freeze!" Another lady cop shouted him, coming from around a corner. "Oh!"

BANG! Shinji pulled the trigger and felt the power of the shotgun as he fired at the woman, blowing a hole in her stomach, sending her falling back against the wall. He watched her cough out blood and decided she was going to die later and left her to continue his search for their armory, walking past her.

Unknown to him, however, another male cop showed up and saw his fallen comrade bleeding her last drop out her stomach.

"Yuki…" He said, and felt crossed, rising up to kill the boy once and for all. "Hey, you!"

He fired eight rounds at his back, but all Shinji did was stop, turn around, and blow him half to the next world with his pistol and shotgun. All that was left of him was half his head, the rest of his body, minus the missing left arm and the bloody holes.

As Shinji advanced further to his destination, the fire that he started in one of the offices began spreading, burning all in its path.

"Retreat! Retreat!" He heard police screaming, but it was just noise to him, noise that needed to be silenced because it made no sense.

A bunch of cops came running his way, and he fired the rest of his shotgun shells at them, killing them instantly with the remaining six rounds. Thankfully, they were the last bunch he had to go through, as he made it to his destination. It was a large room, filled with every type of firearm you could dream of, with the necessary ammunition to bring out the full potential of each weapon. He could almost smile at his success, since there were more guns in front of him than what he had in his bag.

"It's paradise, wrapped in armor," his Slayer personality expressed, appearing by the shotguns on the left side of the room, made see-through by the emergency lighting.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" The Driving Force persona asked, appearing beside the physical body, a smile on his sad face. "Replenish and adapt. We have an important date to keep."

They disappeared as Shinji walked into the center of the room, dropped his bag…and emptied it. It was a shopping spree, and he had a simple list: The best guns and the largest amount of bullets he was willing to carry to carry out his vendetta with his father. If anybody came in to stop him, he would send them to their maker before he left. More Glock 17 pistols, more efficient sub-machine guns, more shells for his new shotgun, he even took as many grenades there were there that he could fit in his bag. He wasn't going anywhere yet without an arsenal big enough to take out all that stood between him and his old man. Once he had loaded his bag to capacity and his coat pockets were filled his other guns, he found a microwave oven and placed a lit candle in front of it and left the gas on; he was going to leave the living, the dead and the near-dead to burn to ashes in the building, and show the people what he was truly capable of to keep them at bay.

"…We can't help them, Katsuragi," he heard a voice say to someone. "We gotta go. He could be coming this way."

"I'm not afraid of him," he heard a woman respond.

"That gun won't stop him, Katsuragi. He's already killed more than half the people here and the rest ran with their tails between their legs. Live today, fight another day. Let's go. Now!"

Shinji followed the voices and then heard an engine running. He speed-walked to an open door with a wheelchair ramp and safety railing, just in time to see a blue Renault A310 speeding away. Not taking any chances, he raised his sub-machine gun up and fired at it, but all he managed to hit was the rear view window and metal frame before it sped around a corner, disappearing from his sight. Its escape was also due to running out of bullets in his weapons.

"I recognized the woman's voice," went the Driving Force persona to his Slayer persona, as they manifested behind Shinji. "It was that woman that came to get us from the institute."

"Along with the elder," responded Slayer. "It's been years since we heard of him. We'd best get going now. We have what we came for."

They disappeared and Shinji discarded the empty gun, tossed his bag over the railing before going over it himself. He picked it up and walked away, going down the opposite street the Renault sped down. Moments later, he heard a large explosion and the sound of debris falling. Amidst the screaming, killing and blood-spilling, the emotionless child had never felt more free, and as he reloaded his arsenal, he never felt more invincible.

The night was filled with the smell of fire, the sounds of sirens from the police that were away from the station and the fire department on its way, and the darkness of the sky above the station turning red from the flames that engulfed the building.

-x-

The morning news was filled with the horror of the police station aflame the next day. An uncertain body count from the slaughter, combined with Shinji Ikari's previous body counts, gave the fourteen-year-old sociopath a total of one-hundred-thirty-seven for now; the police station, with four floors occupied by most of the remaining police, left to suffer from the explosion and the fire. Shinji had caused so much destruction last night that he managed leave behind a handful of surviving cops, most of whom the doctors estimated wouldn't live long due to sustaining third-degree burns, some broken bones and the bullets holes others received. He left both the ones he killed and the ones he didn't see, those that were unable to escape from the building when it exploded, to burn in the fire.

"…This is insane," went Ritsuko, watching the news on her television set in her apartment.

DING-DONG! The doorbell rung, and she went to check who was there by looking through the peephole, sighing at the sight of Misato. She opened the door and let her in.

"You look like Hell," she told her friend.

"You have no idea of what the Hell was unleashed last night," Misato retorted, sitting down in a chair nearby in the kitchen. "How can a fourteen-year-old just…go to a police station…and just kill dozens of officers there?"

"You saw him there?"

"No…but the Sub-Commander and I had to haul ass before we got a bullet in the head. Shinji shot at my car as we sped away."

"He must've feared he left a cop that would come back for him, so he just assumed and opened fire on you and Fuyutsuki."

"You probably wouldn't be saying that if he shot at you," Misato countered; she knew how much her friend dealt with theories and all the science babel, but barely had any experience out in the real world, where nearly every day had a measure of trauma. "He's a man on a mission, driven by revenge, let out into a city that's become his playground, occupied by people that can become victims if they decide to go after him…or he feels that he needs to harm somebody, like how he capped a kid's old man's leg in an alley. Now, with the police reduced in excess, you might as well say that he's brought Tokyo-3 to its massive knees. More than half the police are dead and the rest are scared enough to shit in their pants."

"He hasn't brought the city down to its knees. He's just scaring the feeble-minded."

"That's bull, and we're in for more of it. Tomorrow's the endgame. He's gonna come looking for his father, and he's not gonna let anyone stop him, even if he has to go up against the army. Have you even looked at the videos found on the Internet?"

"I don't believe half that crap they put online. I do want to believe, however, that the boy doesn't have long to pay for his crimes by anyone of a lesser authority."

"What are you talking about?"

"He might be dying, due to a possible tumor in his golf ball-sized brain, along with a bunch of other factors. But I can't know for sure unless I can see medical files that are up-to-date."

"Well, that's a loss for you; that kid hasn't been to a doctor, a therapist, not even a dentist, for over eight years. That mental institution knows how to treat the people like pigs or antiques."

Ritsuko wouldn't deny Misato's words of harsh truths. The institute lacked a lot of information of dozens of its admitted patients, and Shinji was no exception. Anything wrong with him was purely up to speculation by anyone with a degree in science and/or medication. But she couldn't erase the MRI scan of Shinji's brain, wondering how he could still function with less than half a head, or how he was able to do the things he did like he had done it all before. Then again, there was also a dream she had earlier this year that still haunted her: She saw Rei Ayanami, dressed in a yukata with a tiger sewn into it, wearing a strange bracelet with a ring attached to it on her left arm, and then she stabbed her with a series of tentacles that looked like they were made of liquid metal and biological mass, chuckling at her suffering with a malicious passion. Every time she sees the albino girl, she looked like a life-sized doll made of flesh that can't do anything except take orders from Commander Ikari; the Rei Ayanami in her nightmare looked like she had an ego, a remarkable measure of free will and independence, and a hatred of the world she lived in. She wasn't sure who to be more afraid of: A boy-turned-sociopath, said sociopath's uncaring father, or the albino said father would do anything to protect from harm.

-x-

"…Well," went Fuyutsuki to Gendo in the latter's office, "murdering the cops and tearing down the station's a new way to make this city unsafe to live in. Along with shooting at two NERV employees that didn't even see him."

"He's escalating," Gendo expressed.

"Yeah…for when he shows up down here to kill you…and anyone that gets in his way. Either way you want to view it, there's not going to be a happy outcome. He won't pilot the Eva, he won't level with anyone, he's beyond the salvation of help he needed but didn't receive years ago, and he won't let you live after tomorrow."

"He'll be dealt with," Gendo sounded so sure of himself to Fuyutsuki.

"So says the father that manipulated everyone around his son to make sure he grew up miserable. Only problem is that you demanded results too soon…and got unfortunate ones in return." Fuyutsuki then left his office, wondering if it would be the last time he would ever be in there; he had grown weary of Ikari's goal ever since the recent revelations of what you could've called Hell that an innocent child had been forced to dwell in, and wouldn't be surprised if the son refused to hear his father plead for mercy.

"_Why is there a child here?" _He remembered asking, seeing Shinji when he was still an innocent, care-free child that knew absolutely nothing about what was happening around him the day of the Contact Experiment, only to discover that Yui had him brought to see the experiment play itself out.

"_I want him to see the bright future ahead for humanity,"_ Yui's last words were heard, and then…it seemed that all sense of sense…was gone after that.

"…Oh, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," he saw one of the lesser technicians that had been looking at some of Shinji's drawings. "I have something you should look at."

"I've seen enough of his drawings to last me a lifetime," Fuyutsuki told the lady; in truth, he had seen enough of the drawings to know of Shinji's recollection of past events and damaged mentality, so much so that he didn't want to see any more of them, no matter how pretty or grotesque they were.

"Really, sir, this is a drawing you should look at," she told him, turning it over and presenting it to him.

Fuyutsuki stepped back, feeling like he'd been slapped in the face by an invisible force. The drawing was of himself, exactly as he was the day Yui disappeared years ago, looking down at somebody. He knew who it was he was looking down at; there was no denying now that Shinji recognized him, even after years of isolation.

"That man in the drawing," the technician spoke up, "that's you, isn't it?"

Fuyutsuki nodded in the positive, and then walked away.

-x-

Tokyo-3's poor excuse for a park was alarmingly bare and devoid of people, which was fine with Shinji, who sat against a tree on the grass, looking out at the boring lake that was Ashinoko. It was all quiet, which aided in the easing and redirecting of whatever pain he was probably experiencing, but not showing on his face. He blinked once and recalled an awful memory that was from his years before the institution, when he last saw his mother.

"_I want him to see the bright future ahead for humanity,"_ he remembered her last words, among other words she had said to him, but whatever warmth that could've been in those recalled words…was as empty as that future. _"I want him to see the bright future ahead for humanity."_

In his mind, the decimated city structure had been reduced to just a handful of old, rotting buildings ready to crumble down and become an unrecognizable cemetery for him.

"Slayer," Driving Force spoke to his killer self, seeing him lying on the ground next to a pile of debris that had been a building over a year ago. "I had a recent dream that could've been a vision of insanity that has no place anywhere."

"I've experienced the same," the filthy teen responded.

"In the dream, the vision… Something…undeniably incredible…caused many to die," the little boy explained, "places that looked untouched by malice to burn away…and a man in white, lying on a beach with waters that were as red as blood."

"There was a little girl," the teen told him. "She reached out, said that everything would be okay, that there would be no more pain, and then she went…and disappeared from sight. She…she had a round tummy…and a smile directed at us."

"I've seen this girl in my dream. It's as if we knew who she was…but neither of us have ever seen her."

In the real world, Shinji picked up a twig and wrote in the dirt on his right. The words "freedom", "release", "finality" and "penance" were what was written. "Freedom" and "release" for the fulfillment of the "penance" that was created long ago, and the "finality" that was inevitable to deny. In his mind right now, there was no sign of anything relating to the word that was "hope", as it was nothing more than a hollow belief made by people from a past he would never understand. There was no such thing as "hope", just as there was no such thing as a god that forgives or loves every soul that exists.

"No one really loves us," Driving Force said to Slayer, who got up off the lifeless ground.

"No one truly holds us," Slayer added in, just as Shinji, in real life, stood up, picked up his bag of guns and started walking. "No one tries to."

As Shinji walked away from the tall buildings and disappeared into some nearby woods, he heard what seemed like a whisper from a girl, saying to him (at least, in his mind) that whatever "it" was that happened was never his fault, suggesting that, whatever he might've done before, he wasn't responsible for at all. He couldn't understand or fathom what that voice meant by what it said to him. All he really did understand and fathom…was that tomorrow was going to be the most important day of his existence…and he had to see it through to the end. He needed to make good on his word to kill his father, and that was what he was going to do, no matter who stood in his way. Like the decision of the ancient samurai being made within the space of seven breaths, this boy had made the decision to bring the Ikari family to an end, one way or another.

To be continued…

A/N: Well, I'll end this chapter here and get to the final one. I'm considering the creation of a sequel to this story where things step out of place and denial is expressed or something like that. It's also worth noting that the last parts of this chapter show that Shinji, Ritsuko, and, potentially, a few others can be susceptible to events, memories and even dreams that were experienced or exhibited by versions of themselves from other universes in the multiverse, since I had Shinji susceptible to words spoken to another version of himself by a version of Rumi Rokubungi from the universe where he got cursed with eternity by the gods for the sins of his parents (look at _My Special Keeper_ to understand this). As always, please read and review. See you in the next chapter. Peace!


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